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IN THE 



[ 

Shadow of the Pyrenees 



FROM 



Basque-Land to Carcassonne 



BY 

MARVIN R. VINCENT, D.D. 



WITH ETCHINGS AND MAPS 




K'etD fork 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
1883 



Copyright, 1883, by- 
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 



Trow's 
Printing and Bookbinding Company 
201-213 East Twelfth Street 
New York 



JC 



ym 



T,o tfee Stei^^ 



<=; 



WHO KEEP A father's HEART 



BEYOND THE SHADOW OF THE PYRENEES 



THIS VOLUME IS INSCRIBED 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. 

PAGE 

Bayonne, . I 

CHAPTER II. 
Anglet, . 19 

CHAPTER III. 
Le Blanc Pignon, 32 

CHAPTER IV. 
Biarritz, 39 

CHAPTER V. 
Saint- Jean-de-Luz and the Boundary, , , . ^^8 

CHAPTER VI. 
On the Frontier, 59 

CHAPTER VII. 
The Basques, 71 

CHAPTER VIII. 
Euscaldanac, . 90 



vi Contents, 

CHAPTER IX. 

PAGE 

By Omnibus to Pasages, 102 

CHAPTER X. 
Pasages, in 

CHAPTER XI. 
San Sebastian, 121 

CHAPTER XII. 
The Hill Country, . 142 

CHAPTER XIII. 
Azpeitia and Loyola, 155 

CHAPTER XIV. 
Springs and Chateaux, "^IS m 

CHAPTER XV. 

LOURDES, 192 

CHAPTER XVI. 
Toulouse, 211 

CHAPTER XVIL 
Carcassonne, 233 

Notes, . . 265 



ETCHINGS= 

Basque Cart, ...... FrojiHspiece 

Jaines D. Stnillie. 

To face J-ages 

^Street in Fuenterrabia, 67 

Jajues D. Smillie. 

' Priest's Walk— San Sebastian, . . . .135 

R. Sivain Gifford. 

Tour Visiqothe and Tour de l'Inquisition— Car- 

cassonne, ........ 233 

Leroy M. Yale. 



MAPS. 

^ Bayonne — Biarritz — Cambo, . . . . . i 

GuiPUZcoA, . 103 

^San Sebastian, 125 

^ Carcassonne, . . - . , . , ♦ , 245 



BAYONNE—BIHI 



30 



■f 



o 



Capdu Figu'ier 



^ Pt 



\ 



Bidax" 




IN THE 



SHADOW OF THE PYRENEES. 



CHAPTER I. 

BAYONNE. 
" Nunguam Polluta.^'' — Motto of Bayonne. 

A BREAK at last in the weary stretch of 
ghastly, wounded pines and glassy la- 
goons which has flanked the railroad all the 
way from Bordeaux. We are passing out of les 
LandeSy (i) and entering upon the battle-ground 
of the sand and the sea. Beyond the little sta- 
tion of Labenne the bright surf of Biscay flashes 
into view ; there is a glimpse of a signal-tower, 
a mass of dark pines crowning a low promon- 
tory, lines of yellow sand, the chafing Adour, 
and the stone jetties — the long arms with which 
it is fighting back the persistent sands, and 



BAYONNE— BIAR-^ 'ITZ—CA.MBO. 




Authoi*3 Route 



IN THE 



SHADOW OF THE PYRENEES. 



CHAPTER I. 

BAYONNE. 

" Nunquam Polluta." — Motto of Bavonne. 

A BREAK at last in the weary stretch of 
ghastly, wounded pines and glassy la- 
goons which has flanked the railroad all the 
way from Bordeaux. We are passing out of les 
LandeSy (i) and entering upon the battle-ground 
of the sand and the sea. Beyond the little sta- 
tion of Labenne the bright surf of Biscay flashes 
into view ; there is a gHmpse of a signal-tower, 
a mass of dark pines crowning a low promon- 
tory, lines of yellow sand, the chafing Adour, 
and the stone jetties — the long arms with which 
it is fighting back the persistent sands, and 



2 In the Shadow of the Pyrenees. 

keeping open the way to Bayonne. Two great 
stone piers mark the channel of the river, where 
a black steamer lies at anchor, while the huge, 
unwieldy barges creep slowly up past Boucaut 
toward the long quay and the thick shade of 
the Allees Marmes, the favorite promenade of 
the Bayonnais. Two graceful white spires 
shoot up from a mass of mingled foliage and 
chimney-pots ; then warehouses and railway- 
buildings close in the train on the right, and a 
steep mass of rock on the left, and we glide 
into the station at Bayonne. 

Theophile Gautier, whose Voyage en Es- 
pagne, though written in the old diligence 
days, is still among the most thorough and 
interesting of books of travel, dismisses Bay- 
onne with a sarcastic sentence : ''A heap of 
tiles overtopped by a squat and ugly tower." 
But he approached it under a rain-storm, and 
adds, apparently with some compunction for 
his sweeping judgment, *'A city which one 
sees under the rain is naturally ugly." M. 
Taine was equally unfortunate. *' It rains; 
the inn is insupportable. It is stifling under 



Bayonne. 3 

the arcades ; I am bored at the cafe, and am 
acquainted with nobody. The sole resource 
is to go to the Hbrary." So he fills out his 
chapter on Bayonne with old, blood-curdling 
legends. M. Perret, on the other hand, in his 
recent charming book, Le Pays BasqiiCy says, 
** Bayonne m'a cause seulement une grande 
impression d'aise et de plaisir ; " and proves 
it by lingering in the old city through two 
pleasant chapters. ** It is the point of view 
that is the essential thing," remarked the airy 
young Barnacle of the Circumlocution Office. 
For myself, I can truly say I have seen Bayonne 
from about every conceivable point of view. 
Circumstances detained me there a month. I 
forget who it is that says that, in order to fall 
in love with a place, one must be bored with it. 
Certainly I was bored with it, and became thor- 
oughly tired of it ; but as certainly I carry 
away from it the impression of one of the love- 
liest old towns in all France. 

Like the whole of Gaul, as described by 
Caesar, Bayonne is divided into three parts. 
Situated at the confluence of the Adour and 



4 In the Shadow of the Pyrenees, 

the Nive, the former river separates the quarter 
Saint-Esprit from Petit Bayonne, which, in its 
turn, looks across the Nive to Bayonne proper. 

The spacious court of the railway station 
opens into Saint-Esprit, or the Jews' Quarter. 
When Ferdinand and Isabella, in I495> ex- 
pelled the Jews from Spain, the exiles first took 
refuge in Portugal, where, notwithstanding the 
hatred of the Portuguese, a number of them ob- 
tained permission to settle at Lisbon. A pesti- 
lence having broken out, however, the populace 
wreaked its fury on the Jews, butchering and 
burning them by hundreds, in order, as was 
claimed, to appease the divine wrath. The 
majority of those who escaped sought a refuge 
in the environs of Bayonne, where, after having 
been alternately protected and persecuted by 
the French kings, they were placed upon an 
equal footing with other French subjects by a 
decree of Louis the Sixteenth, in 1776. 

From the station gate, a sharp turn to the left 
reveals an ascending street lined with common 
houses and shops. The Jewish physiognomy 
peers out here and there ; the names on the 



Bayonne, 5 

signs have sometimes a flavor which is not 
French ; and an inscription on a large brick 
building indicates an Asylum for aged Israel- 
ites ; but, on the whole, the Jewish mark is 
not deeply set. Saint-Esprit has, generally, a 
cheaper and more neglige aspect than Bay- 
onne proper ; it is Bayonne en d^shabille\ 
but is not especially dirty or otherwise repul- 
sive. Trade is a mightier fusionist than reli- 
gion ; and the day is long past when the Bay- 
onne Jew was forbidden to appear out of doors 
after sunset, was forced to wear a yellow cord 
on his robe and bonnet, and must say hep ! 
instead of s-s-s-t ! when he called a Bayonnais 
in the street, so that the worthy Christian 
should not be betrayed into turning his head at 
the appeal of a Jew unless he so chose. 

Near the summit of the hill the street falls 
off on the left into a wooded slope, where some 
soldiers are practising the rifle-drill, marking 
the time, un / deux / trois ! in concert and 
with strong explosive tones. It is by no means 
certain, by the way, that the bayonet owes 
either its name or its origin to Bayonne. The 



6 In the Shadow of the Pyrenees. 

French cross-bowmen were anciently called 
bawnniers, and hayna is Spanish for a sheath 
of a small sword. The sheath may have given 
name to its contents ; a supposition which 
seems to be confirmed by several facts. The 
earliest bayonet-sheaths were very elaborately 
ornamented, and the rules relating to military 
costume have a great deal to say about the 
position of the sheath. A youngster lies in the 
path, in imminent danger of rupture from his 
attempts to produce the military calls on an old 
bugle. A path through the grove leads to the 
rear gate of the citadel, and passing over the 
bridge, through a network of passages, and up 
narrow stone steps to the grass-grown summit of 
the wall, we work round to the right, stopping 
now and then to gather the abundant black- 
berries, and come out upon the face of the cita- 
del, which forms part of the tremendous fortifica- 
tions of Vauban by which Bayonne is encircled. 
Nothing can exceed the loveliness of the 
view from this point. The city, crowned by 
the white spires of the cathedral, is directly 
below, across the Adour. The Nive, stealing 



Bayonne. 7 

softly down from the Basque Hills, cuts it diag- 
onally, and passes under four handsome stone 
bridges to mingle with the Adour, the point of 
junction being marked by a triangular redoubt 
overshadowed witji trees, and with a piquant 
little turret at the salient angle ; which redoubt 
alio forms the head of the great bridge of eight 
arches spanning the Adour, and connecting Bay- 
onne with Saint-Esprit. The triangle formed 
by the two rivers embraces Petit Bayonne, 
overlooked by the twin towers of the church of 
Saint- Andre. The Adour creeps away in many 
a swirl under the flat arches and round the 
massive piers of the stone bridge, past a long 
line of shaded quay, and under the ugly iron 
railroad bridge, and loses itself in the low 
wooded hills to the eastward — the boundary 
of Beam. Turning back to the city, the eye 
passes from the square custom-house with its 
drum-like dome, across the little shaded square 
on the right, to the solid masonry of the Porte 
Marine, the beginning of the line of works 
which throw out their gray bastions against the 
emerald-green glacis and the dark foliage of the 



8 In the Shadow of the Pyrenees. 

Alices Paulmy. From the Porte Marine, the 
quadruple row of trees of the Alices Marines 
stretches along the river bank toward the sea, 
to the great bend that terminates in the Blanc 
Pignon, over the dark pines of which sparkles 
the sea. Back from the Adour the ground 
rises in mingled woodland and pasture, with 
the convent buildings at Anglet and the top of 
the pharos at Biarritz. The magnificent back- 
ground of the picture begins far to the east in 
the faint blue summits of the higher Pyrenees, 
and is prolonged by the nearer mountains of 
Navarre, and completed by the sea. On a clear 
day, one may look past the pharos at Biarritz, 
and over into the bay of Saint-Jean-de-Luz with 
its fortress of Socoa, and across to Cap du Fig- 
uier and Fuenterrabia on its little promontory. 

Solomon in all his glory would have paled 
before a Bayonnais hackman. As he comes 
into view, at the end of a long street or perspec- 
tive of trees, one is reminded of Dante's picture : 

*' As when, upon the approach of morning, 
Through the gross vapors Mars grows fiery red, 
Down in the west upon the ocean floor." 



Bayonne. 9 

Two rudimental tails barely redeem from 
jackethood his black coat, trimmed with silver 
lace, faced with scarlet and white, studded with 
countless buttons, and opening over a blazing 
scarlet waistcoat. White pants complete this 
wondrous creature at one extremity, and a high 
shiny hat with broad silver band at the other. 

Under the auspices of this brilliant vision, 
marshalling us like a pillar of fire over the Pont 
Saint-Esprit, and past the huge structure resting 
upon its shady arcades, which serves for theatre, 
custom-house, city hall, and most other public 
purposes, we reach the Hotel Saint-Etienne, in 
the Rue Thiers. Our landlord was a veritable 
forlorn hope in his desperate and heroic assault 
on the English tongue, of which he now and 
then succeeded in carrying an outwork, though 
with much slaughter of verbs and prepositions. 
A pleasant memory is that cosy little dining- 
room, with its pink walls, and the two gargons, 
the dark-eyed, bilious Spaniard, and the wiry 
little Frenchman whose chef-d'oeuvre in English 
was two eggSy and who described last night's 
storm by — rain to-night/ The pleasant, 



lo In the Shadow of the Pyrenees. 

shaded street in front leads up past the Chateau 
Vieux, with its four low cylindrical towers, built 
in the twelfth century, and, according to some, 
resting in part upon Roman foundations. 

A little farther on, at the end of the street, 
rises the cathedral. The liveliest imagination 
cannot make it impressive, though it has been 
vastly improved by the two spires, for which, 
as for several other noble gifts, Bayonne is in- 
debted to a private citizen, one M. Lormand. 
The front is dilapidated and shabby, and rude 
wood and plaster booths or shops project here 
and there between the buttresses, like old sores. 
It is not a large church, possibly a little larger 
than the cathedral in Fifth Avenue, and dates 
from the thirteenth century. The interior is a 
good and pure specimen of high gothic, entirely 
wanting in decoration, with the exception of 
some colored escutcheons in the vaulting of the 
nave, and the new polychromatic adornment of 
the chapels in the retro-choir. A hint of the 
city's history is given in the leopards of England 
sculptured on the key-stones of the vaulting 
within, while the fleur-de-lis is sown in profusion 



Bayonne. 1 1 

over the buttresses of the towers. From 1295 
to 145 1, Bayonne was in possession of the Eng- 
lish ; the fleur-de-lis marks its recovery by 
France in 145 1. The only remains of the an- 
cient sculptures are found over the south door, 
which now opens into the sacristy, and represent 
Christ and the apostles, the virgin and child 
surrounded by angels with instruments of music, 
Christ showing his wounds amid a group of an- 
gels bearing the instruments of the passion, and 
the resurrection. From the sacristy a passage 
leads to the cloisters, the only really remarkable 
feature of the church. On each of the three 
sides (the church forming the fourth), six su- 
perbly vaulted bays are separated by sheaves of 
columns with richly carved capitals, and open 
upon the court by grand pointed windows, each 
divided by three delicate shafts supporting 
ogives. The western and part of the southern 
sides have been enclosed and coarsely decorated 
in color, forming a chapel ; the other portions 
are bare and much defaced, containing nothing 
of interest except the mutilated statue of a 
bishop. The old sacristan was communicative, 



1 2 In the Shadow of the Pyrenees. 

and expressed views on the Chinese question in 
America, as he had a son in San Francisco. 

What a Babel of tongues ! French is spoken 
with a peculiar accent, the silent e, for instance, 
being usually enunciated. Every shopkeeper 
speaks Spanish, and the signs are often in both 
languages. With these mingle the harsh accents 
of the Basques, who may be seen everywhere, 
and especially along the Nive, on the quay which 
bears their name, distinguished by the colored 
sash round the loins, and the peculiar cap — the 
blue boyna or herety a little fuller in the crown 
than that of the Spanish Basques. 

Let us saunter toward the river under these 
low, sombre arcades of the Port Neuf, swarm- 
ing with shops and recalling the streets of 
Berne. We shall surely yield to the seduc- 
tions of the chocolate shops, Cazenave's espe- 
cially. The trimly-shod, pretty Bayonnaises 
trip modestly by, olive- skinned, dark-eyed, 
grave, with the coils of black hair at the back 
of the head neatly enfolded in gay handker- 
chiefs. Emerging from the arcades and turn- 
ing to the right, the Quai des Basques leads 



Bayonne, 1 3 

past the new iron market, tempting with its 
fruit and flowers and the fish swimming in the 
cool dark tanks. All along the quay lie the flat 
galtipes with their long narrow rudders, laden 
with broken stone and firewood. Across the 
stream are the Arceaiix de la Galuperie. The 
monotonous sound of children's singing or re- 
citing comes across the water from the ^cole 
Communale. On the stone slope leading down 
to the water, a man is washing a lamb, while 
another holds a string attached to the collar of 
a wretched white cur, and having soused him 
sufficiently, lifts him out by the string and 
begins to go over him with a stiff brush. We 
are at the end of the quay, and pass out of the 
city through the Porte Saint-Leon. The Nive 
stretches away toward the green hills of Cambo 
round a beautiful wooded bend, and under a stiff 
railroad bridge. The gate of the fosse at the cor- 
ner of the city wall is raised a little, forming a 
pool into which some artillery-men are driving 
their horses breast deep, perched on their backs 
on all-fours to avoid a wetting. In a hollow to 
the left, a score of women are washing clothes 



14 /^ the Shadow of the Pyrenees. 

and chatting round a covered reservoir. A 
little, oven-like, hexagonal structure is close at 
hand, of rough stone, whitewashed and sur- 
mounted with a cupola. This is the famous 
fountain of Saint-Leon, bearing on its front a 
tablet recounting the legend of this martyr of 
the tenth century, who, when beheaded, took up 
his head and carried it as far as this spot, where 
the fountain sprang up from the drops of blood. 
For a long time the water was supposed to 
possess miraculous virtue. The fountain is now 
entirely enclosed, and a substantial iron pump- 
handle discharges the sacred stream through a 
copper pipe. Up the slope, with the gray, grass- 
topped city wall and the green fosse and glacis 
on the right, and the fine, shaded parade-ground 
on the left. Here is the Porte d'Espagne, out 
of which issues the road to Biarritz and Cambo. 
A street runs between the western wall and 
the houses, a quiet, shady walk, broken at in- 
tervals by a round, plastered tower stepping out 
from the line of dwellings, a remnant of the 
older fortifications utilized for home purposes, 
and by no means unattractive with its small 



Bayonne* 1 5 

windows and climbing vines. Past the Chateau 
Vieux, and back again to Saint-£tienne. A 
picturesque group this before the door : an 
old man with a broad-brimmed hat crowded 
down over a black handkerchief, accompanied 
by an ancient dame carrying a cup for contri- 
butions, and the twain escorting a patriarchal 
ram, whose tremendous dimensions suggest the 
woolly hero of Colchis ; the beast hobbling on 
three legs, and wildly pawing the air in the 
vain effort to get the fourth to the ground. 

The monotony of a long stay in Bayonne 
was somewhat relieved by a great fair which 
continued during several weeks. The Place 
d'Armes, directly facing the Custom-house, 
was surrounded on all four sides by booths, 
where a bewildering variety of cheap articles 
was exposed, and where the air was rent with 
the howls of rival vendors. But the great 
attraction was along the Alices Paulmy, just 
outside the western wall, where was a row 
of shows which nothing but a Dutch Kermis 
could equal. There were two circus tents, be- 
fore one of which the whole company paraded 



1 6 In the Shadow of the Pyrenees. 

for half an hour before each performance : two 
clowns, one gymnast, one fat woman in tights, 
two smaller women who merely ambled round 
the platform, and a band of five musicians, in- 
cluding a trombone player, the perfect embodi- 
ment of the dime-novel brigand. Close by, a 
menagerie advertised its attractions by highly 
colored paintings of valiant hunters in deadly 
battle with lions and bears, and in the person 
of Mademoiselle Aissa, '*the renowned <^^;;^/- 
teuse^'' who appeared in front of the booth, now 
beating a drum, now juggling with balls, and 
again, wearing round her swarthy neck a live 
anaconda. A merry-go-round, bedecked with 
spangles and furnished with wooden horses, was 
a constant attraction to the youngsters, as it 
flew round to the music of a drum and a barrel- 
organ. The adjoining exhibition of wax figures 
displayed cartoons representing the tortures of 
the Inquisition and a scene at a dissecting table. 
The entire front of the unfortunate subject was 
dissected out, and a young demonstrator was 
expounding over the cavity to a group of awe- 
stricken students. Meanwhile an automatic 
organ at the entrance played Schubert's Sere- 



Bayonne. i y 

nade with a volume of dismal sound which 
literally saturated the air, and which, blending 
with the neighboring hand-organ and the toot- 
ings of the three rival bands, made one long 
for the calliope. Then there was a bird lot- 
tery, and a photograph gallery, and a shooting 
booth, and waffle-bakeries, and the two crock- 
ery lotteries, the one presided over by the 
man with the eternal smile, and the other by a 
pretty Frenchwoman who handled the crowd 
with charming adroitness, dealing her tickets 
with a running fire of talk, beguiling the boat- 
men and soldiers with her smiles, now whirling 
the great wheel, and now handing down a prize 
of decanters or drinking-glasses to a pleased 
housewife, or bestowing with ineffable grace a 
nameless article upon an astonished soldier. 

The motley but well-behaved crowd surges 
up and down between the booths, servant maids 
from the town, soldiers from the garrison, sail- 
ors from the ships in the Adour, Basque coun- 
try people from Ustaritz and Itsatsou ; French, 
Spanish, Basque chatter mingles with the drone 
of the organs and the rattle of the drum at 
which one of the clowns is leathering away. 



1 8 In the Shadow of the Pyrenees, 

In a shooting booth a man is practising with a 
rifle at live ducks, the victim being placed in 
an iron tank with a weight attached to his leg, 
in water only high enough to leave his head 
above the edge of the tank. The marksman 
kills two while I stand. It is growing dark, 
and dinner is waiting at the Saint-Etienne. The 
arcades of the Custom-house flare out in gas 
jets. There is a crowd at the corner of the 
Place d'Armes. The drums roll for the relief 
of the guard, and the fifteen or more trumpeters 
march up the Rue Thiers to the Chateau, sound- 
ing the recall. The omnibus dashes up from 
the train, and the anxious passengers dismount 
and hold conference with Madame B. ere the 
trunks are ordered down, for the Saint-Etienne 
is full. From an open window far up in the 
Custom-house float the shrill notes of an inde- 
fatigable practitioner on the flute. The rich 
strains of the splendid military band rise from 
the adjoining square ; the newsboys wail La 
Gironde ! and we count at least eleven dogs in 
the street, with the pleasing certainty that the 
night will be "filled with music." 



Anglet. 19 



CHAPTER 11. 

ANGLET. 

" Into the silent land ! Ah, who shall lead us thither? " — Salis. 

ALONG, low, unobtrusive little railroad 
station seems to be trying to hide itself 
among the trees just behind the Alices Marines ; 
and in front of this appear, every twenty min- 
utes or so, a little locomotive with a very high 
and slender smoke-stack, and a train of two- 
story carriages, by which train one can run 
down to Biarritz in a quarter of an hour. A 
little more than half-way to Biarritz is the sta- 
tion of Anglet, a small and not picturesque vil- 
lage, where, however, a visitor will be repaid for 
a delay of two hours by witnessing one of the 
noblest fruits of Christian charity, and one of 
the oddest developments of Romish superstition. 
The Abbe Cestac, who had already estab- 
lished at Bayonne a Maison d' OrphelineSy was 



20 In the Shadow of the Pyrenees. 

urged to found a refuge for fallen women, and 
accordingly purchased for this purpose, in 1839, 
a large tract of land between Bayonne and 
Biarritz. His extensive knowledge of chem- 
istry was at once applied to reclaim the sandy 
soil, and with such success that the barren plain 
was in due time converted into a smiling and 
productive farm. Here he erected a range 
of buildings and invited the repentieSy who, 
upon their reception into the Refuge, were set 
at work about the gardens, fields, and barns. 
The institution was placed in charge of the 
** Servants of Mary," the same order which had 
superintended the orphanage at Bayonne. 

In 1842, Sister Madeleine, the sister of the 
Abb^ and his associate in the work of founding 
the Refuge, asked his permission to retire, for 
meditation and prayer, to a neighboring cabane, 
where some aged people were already await- 
ing death. Followed by several sisters of the 
order, she betook herself to a desolate, sandy 
tract between the sea and the Adour, and in 
this *^ new and dismal Thebaid " the little band 
of devotees gave themselves up to silence, 



Anglet. 21 

agricultural labor, and prayer. This was the 
foundation of the new order of Bernardines, 
which received the formal approval of the Pope 
in 1851. 

The sisters of the ** Servants of Mary," who 
are quite distinct from the Bernardines, may 
often be seen on the railway between Biarritz 
and Bayonne, distinguished by their costume 
of plain blue, with white apron and head-dress. 
As I walked up toward the village this morn- 
ing, I met three of them riding to the station in 
a little donkey-cart. To the right of the main 
road, a private road reserved for visitors turned 
off, following the enclosure of the Refuge stables, 
where several women were busy at the compost 
heaps, and opened, at the corner of the enclo- 
sure, into a large court, one side of which was 
formed by the buildings of the Refuge, and an- 
other by the church, a spacious and apparently 
new building, with transepts, and a vaulted ceil- 
ing decorated in polychrome. 

One of the blue-robed sisters, with her eyes 
protected by colored goggles, took me in charge, 
and led the way through a gate into a large 



22 In the Shadow of the Pyrenees. 

quadrangle and through a series of well-kept 
hot-houses containing a brilliant array of flow- 
ers ; thence into a large vegetable garden, on one 
side of which a plain slab marks the resting- 
place of the Abbe Gestae. It was a great day 
in the quiet life of the sisters, as it happened, 
for Monseigneur the Bishop of Bayonne had 
chosen that day for a visit to the Refuge, and 
drove up in a coach with attendant clergy as I 
was beginning my explorations. Another vis- 
itor was also present in the person of a Capu- 
chin friar, in brown habit, with sandaled feet, 
and with a very decided tonsure, in marked 
contrast with the French priests in this neighbor- 
hood. So far as I could see, these latter were 
shy of the tonsure, confining it in many cases 
to a round spot on the back of the head about 
as large as a silver dollar, and much smaller 
than may be seen upon the pate of many a 
free-thinking Bostonian. 

Having made the circuit of the gardens and 
passed through some of the lower rooms of the 
Refuge, neat as a Broek parlor and furnished 
with Quaker-like simplicity, the blue sister mar- 



Anglet, 23 

shalled me along a road between fields of grain, 
where the broad-brimmed straw hats of the peni- 
tents appeared among the stalks, and past the 
large brick building of the Pe?isionnat, until, at a 
distance of about a quarter of a mile, we struck 
into a pathway of loose sand leading through a 
grove of pines. Five minutes' walk brought us 
to a short archway of plane trees, under which 
lay the entrance to the home of silence. The 
place was absolutely isolated. Not a hint of 
sea, river, or mountain reached the eye from any 
point. The roar of the surf at Biarritz came 
hoarsely on the wind, and this, with the occa- 
sional sighing of the breeze through the pines, 
was the only sound which broke the deathlike 
stillness. 

Through a flower garden in Avhich was an en- 
closure containing the tomb of Soeur Madeleine, 
we passed to the chapel, a small, plain structure, 
with an altar of gray paper manufactured at the 
Refuge. The altar was surmounted by a figure 
of the Virgin with a really beautiful face, and 
dressed in a black robe trimmed with gold lace. 
Close by the church door, agate opened upon a 



24 I^ the Shadow of the Pyrenees. 

scene which can be described only as a garden of 
nightmares. A large oblong space, surround- 
ed by the conventual buildings, was laid out 
in hotbeds, and bending over these were half a 
dozen female figures which incarnated the most 
hideous fancies of childish dreams. A coarse 
woollen robe of dirty white enveloped the 
person from head to foot ; a heavy, pointed 
cape was fastened back over the shoulders, dis- 
closing portions of the blue cross on the back ; 
an enormous cowl, fitting closely round the back 
of the head and projecting several inches in front 
of the face, was gathered up into a small circular 
opening which effectually concealed the features. 
The bare feet were thrust into coarse sandals, 
and the red, cracked, roughened hands gave no 
hint of the gracious ministries of womanhood. 
The blue sister, in a kind of stage whisper, 
exclaimed Voila les Bernardmes / Not a sign 
betrayed that they were aware of the presence 
of visitors. Mutterings issued from the hoods 
from time to time — snatches of prayers, verses 
of Scripture — and they plied their toil with a ner- 
vous intensity, as if trying to drown at once the 



Anglet. 25 

memory of their faultful past, and the sense 
of their dismal present. The spectacle was as 
ghostly as any picture in the Inferno. These 
goblins, furiously scratching the earth and tear- 
ing up weeds, suggested ghouls ransacking a 
churchyard rather than humble penitents ex- 
piating their faults. 

In reply to my question whether the obliga- 
tion of silence was absolute and perpetual, the 
sister said yes, as respected intercourse with each 
other ; but that, in cases of emergency, they were 
allowed to address their superiors of the Refuge. 
I could not restrain the utterance of a little mild 
skepticism. Human nature is pretty much the 
same in a Romanist and in a Protestant; in a 
lonely pine-wood and in a city. Twenty or 
thirty women (to say nothing of the other 
sex) cannot be shut up anywhere and not talk. 
The " emergencies," I take it, are blessings in 
disguise, and I am greatly mistaken if more 
than Scripture quotations and prayers does not 
issue from those woollen lanterns. With every 
disposition to be tolerant of the crudest forms 
of sincere devotion, I conceived the impression 



26 In the Shadow of the Pyrenees. 

that there was a taint of humbug about this 
thing, and that it was maintained, in part at 
least, as a paying exhibition. The sisters of 
the Refuge, with two of whom I conversed, 
evidently inteUigent women, appeared to me 
to regard it with something of contempt. I 
visited the institution twice. The first time, I 
was detained outside the garden of the Ber- 
nardines while the attendant sister went on 
before. Was I quite uncharitable afterward in 
the thought that she had gone to arrange the 
ghastly scene at the hotbeds ? The second time, 
there were no goblins on duty in the garden, but 
two or three were standing with their brooms 
in the doorway of one of the buildings ; and, 
on my sudden appearance, they whisked away 
with an agility which indicated that the con- 
ventual discipline, however it might have fet- 
tered their tongues, had not affected their 
limbs. 

At the end of the nightmare garden, a door 
opened into the refectory, a low, long room 
with benches and tables of unpainted pine 
round the four sides, the soft sand for a floor, 



Angle t, 27 

and the windows encased in ugly brown paper 
frames, and ornamented with some rude statu- 
ettes, and some flowers which formed a refresh- 
ing contrast to this wholesale perversion of na- 
ture. Little drawers in the tables contained 
the table-furniture of each nun, consisting of a 
little pipkin of coarse red earthenware, a knife, 
a fork, a wooden spoon, and a napkin with a 
blue border. Voila le cristal ! said the sister, 
taking up the pipkin ; and, pointing to the knife 
and fork and spoon, added, Voila V argenterie ! 
When the Soeur Madeleine and the first re- 
cluses went into retreat, they built for them- 
selves some rude huts and a chapel of straw, 
which, in 185 1, were replaced by the present 
board cells covered with tiles, and by a more 
substantial chapel. The original chapel, how- 
ever, is still preserved, together with one of the 
original huts. This latter was close beside the 
refectory door. It was constructed of light 
strips of wood, with straw woven neatly be- 
tween and with a roof of thatch. It was about 
five feet square, and I could just stand comfort- 
ably upright under the roof The floor was of 



28 In the Shadow of the Pyrenees. 

sand mixed with sharp stones. One side of the 
cell was entirely occupied by a hard, narrow 
bed, at the foot of which was a black cross on 
the wall,, and the motto DiEU Seul in black 
letters on a white ground. A box, on which 
were placed a bowl and pitcher of the coarsest 
kind, and a wooden, rush-bottomed chair at the 
bed's head, completed the furniture. A flea, 
at this point, found green pastures and death 
on the back of my neck, and from the violent 
inflammation which ensued, I was led to infer 
that that insect, already much too vigorous and 
venomous in his natural state, was encouraged 
here as a means of grace. The good blue sis- 
ter, instead of exulting over this infliction as 
a righteous judgment upon a heretic, tenderly 
patted my inflamed neck (she was past sixty), 
and uttered gentle expressions of sympathy. 
The original chapel is, like the hut, of the 
rudest description. A figure of the dead Christ 
lay below the paper altar, and the Virgin stood 
above in blue and white and surrounded with 
evergreens in pots. All over the establish- 
ment, over every door and on every wall, are 



Anglet. 29 

hung or painted mottoes. Here are two or 
three specimens: ** Je conduirai Tame dans la 
solitude, et la je parlerai a son coeur." ** Si 
vous oubliez vos peches, Dieu s'en souviendra. 
Si vous en souvenez, II les oubliera." In the 
sales-room are these: **I1 en coute de bien 
vivre, mais qu'il sera doux de bien mourir." 
** Soyez pret, dit Notre Seigneur. L'etes vous 
dans ce moment " ? 

This sales-room is filled with dolls in the 
monastic costumes, photographs, crosses, pin- 
cushions, amulets, and other articles which 
one sees at church fairs ; but the skill of the 
Servantes is not confined to these things. The 
very cases and shelves of the sales-room are their 
work. They are carpenters and shoemakers as 
well as seamstresses. 

It was like awaking from a ghastly dream 
to pass out under the planes and into the open 
pine-wood ; to see the blue mountains and the 
spires of Bayonne. As we walked back to the 
Refuge, the sister said, in answer to my ques- 
tion, that the system employed there worked 
well ; that the Magdalens came of their own 



30 In the Shadow of the Pyrenees. 



o 



accord, and were at liberty to leave when they 
would, but that they mostly remained and de- 
voted themselves to the hard labor required of 
them. Whatever we may think of the system, 
it is a fair and sharp embodiment of a definite 
policy of Christian philanthropists with regard 
to a class which is a standing problem to Pro- 
testantism. There might be worse things for 
these poor creatures than a cleanly home under 
strict discipline, with simple fare and hard labor, 
and in the atmosphere of devotion. Stubborn 
Protestant as I am, I have only a good word 
to say of the quiet work at Anglet, always ex- 
cepting the horrors of the Bernardine convent. 
Not only Protestantism, but natural instinct and 
common sense, recoil from those. 

The blue sister led me through the rabbit- 
hutches and the poultry-yards, and into the 
spacious barns, where figures of the Virgin look 
down on the stalls neatly littered for the return- 
ing cows ; and thence to the piggery, a large 
paved court surrounded with closed pens, where 
the presiding genius, a barefooted damsel of 
sixteen or seventeen, opened sundry doors, and 



Anglet. 31 

stirred up with vigorous kicks the representa- 
tive porkers of Anglet to come out and exhibit 
their beauties. Here, it seems, the story of 
the parable is reversed, and the returned prodi- 
gal is set at keeping swine. It was with a 
touching naivete that the blue sister observed, 
as a gigantic fellow heaved up his fat side, 
** He will make good ham by and by ! " 

I could not help saying to her as she finally 
let me out at the gate, ** God bless you ! You 
will not hesitate to take that at least from a Pro- 
testant." '' By no means," she answered, 
'* God bless you!'' She had been there, she 
said, thirty-two years. Kindly, courteous, cul- 
tivated, ready-handed, her life given to those 
to whom Divine lips said, ^* Go in peace and sin 
no more," she will finish her few remaining 
years in such ministries, and lie down to quiet 
rest amid the flowers she has tended, and with 
the solemn voice of the sea ever coming up 
from Biscay, and beyond there, where there is 
no more sea, shall it not be said to her, 
'' Well done " ? 



32 In the Shadow of the Pyrenees, 



CHAPTER III. 

LE BLANC PIGNON. 

" Per la pineta in sul lito di Chiassi." — Dante. 

WE linger in Bayonne. Who would not 
be moved to linger ? For this summer 
morning, under the trees of the AUees Marines, 
is a veritable dream of peace. The Adour rip- 
ples and swirls against the long stone quay, its 
sparkling surface ruffled by the cool morning 
wind which blows up from the sea, filling out 
the sails of the huge barges, making a pleasant 
sound in the trees, and weaving an ever-shifting 
pattern of shadows on the trim, gravelled paths, 
and on the sides of the moored ships. The 
cheerful bugle-calls ring down from the citadel. 
The anglers sit on the stone coping, musingly 
watching their lines as they sway with the 
eddies. Across the river the panting engines 
bustle up and down ; some soldiers are bathing 



Le Blanc Pignon. '^'^ 

in front of the white tents pitched by the shore 
at the foot of the citadel, and a group is gath- 
ered round a steam pile-driver, which comes 
down at intervals of a minute upon the head of 
a sturdy pine log with a crack like a rifle's. A 
city of nearly thirty thousand people is just 
within those rain-streaked walls yonder, yet the 
quiet is almost that of the open country. The 
noise of the stream of vehicles and pedestrians, 
which pours unceasingly across the bridge of 
Saint-Esprit, does not reach the ear, and the 
figures pass and repass as in a panorama, while 
the long boats shoot the arches and come mer- 
rily down with the tide. 

The Blanc Pignon was a grateful refuge this 
morning from the shadeless stretch of road be- 
tween it and the Alices Marines. This pine- 
grove, covering the promontory at the mouth 
of the Adour, is one of the fringes of that re- 
markable region known as Les Landes, and ex- 
tending from the Garonne to the Adour, and 
from the Gelise to the ocean dunes — that region 
of sand, pines, stagnant pools, malarial fevers, 
and men and women on stilts. Here, in the 
3 



34 I^ i^^ Shadow of the Pyrenees. 

Blanc Pignon, one may examine the process of 
bleeding the pines which furnishes the principal 
revenue of Les Landes. The tree must not be 
bled until its trunk measures about a yard, at a 
height of six feet from the ground. The bark 
is raised over the whole surface destined for the 
cuts of the year, by a kind of knife called sarcle 
a pela. About a month later the first transverse 
incision, called pique ^ is made, and a new one is 
added below, every eight days, until the whole 
space to the ground has been cut. These cross- 
cuts are then all united in a broad incision run- 
ning up the trunk, and known as the care. This 
care is used for five or six years and then aban- 
doned. Meanwhile, after about three years, an- 
other care is opened on the opposite side of the 
tree, and so on, at intervals, all round the trunk. 
In some of the trees the cares number three, 
four, five, six, and on one I counted eight. The 
tree seemed pretty far gone, but the resin was 
flowing freely from the last cut. The resin is of 
two kinds, le b arras and lagemme ; the latter the 
more valuable, and falling in drops like pearls. 
The barras is white and opaque, clinging to the 



Le Blanc Pignon. 35 

care^ which it covers with a substance like sugar- 
candy. The cuttings which I saw ran up from 
the ground to a height of ten or twelve feet ; 
and a tin leader, about an inch in width, con- 
ducted the resin into a small earthen receiver 
like a crucible. The deposit in the pots was 
sometimes of the consistency of water and of 
a light yellow color, and sometimes like white 
wax, and again of a blood-red tint ; while the 
barras in the care formed a mass like a rough- 
ened icicle. 

On a day like this one is not in haste to leave 
the cool shadow of the pines, especially when 
the beautiful view of Bayonne and its mountain 
background, commanded by the summit of the 
promontory, is such a feast to the eye. Never- 
theless, we hearken to the voice of the sea call- 
ing from beyond the pines, and stroll on 

** Su per lo suol che d'ogni parte oliva," 

until the semaphore appears at the entrance of 
the river, and the odd little port of Boucaut on 
the opposite bank — a port, the destinies of 
which have been capricious, since they have de- 



^6 In the Shadow of the Pyrenees. 

pended upon the freaks of a very capricious 
river. For it is almost certain that the Adour 
has changed its bed several times. Toward the 
end of the fourteenth century, if we are to be- 
lieve the chroniclers, the river took a fancy to 
move northward, opening a track in the sand at 
the foot of the dunes to the sea, between Vieux 
Boucaut and Cap Breton, forming a fine har- 
bor at the former place, around which grew up 
a seaport town which counted its mariners by 
hundreds. Meanwhile, poor Bayonne was vainly 
bewailing the perfidy of its river from the bot- 
tom of the lagoon in which it found itself lodged, 
until relief came, either from the ingenuity of 
the French engineer, Louis de Foix, or from 
the deluge of water from the Pyrenees which 
followed a tremendous tempest, and, in finding 
its way to the sea, forced the sands to the right. 
The port of Bayonne was suddenly reopened, 
and the channel which had carried the Adour to 
old Boucaut was as suddenly closed, leaving the 
latter high and dry. Yet the river still shows 
vagabond tendencies which the highest engi- 
neering skill finds it difficult to restrain. ''Lit- 



Le Blanc Pignon, - 37 

tie grains of sand " become a formidable agent 
in such hands as those of the billows of Biscay. 
Within five or six years a tempest made the 
entrance to the river impracticable for sever- 
al weeks, and Bayonne seemed destined once 
more to be cut off from the sea. Even the two 
huge jetties, between which the river now enters 
the ocean, afford no certainty that it will not 
some day rob Bayonne of its commerce again. 
The bar is forever in a ferment, and it is only 
at high tide, and with a strong and favorable 
wind, that ships can go up without the aid of the 
steam-tug which is stationed off New Boucaut. 
To the left of the jetties lies the race-course, 
with a track of eighteen hundred feet. The 
headland of Saint-Martin, with the great light- 
house of Biarritz, comes into view, and, beyond, 
Biarritz itself rising on its terraces. A few min- 
utes' walk brings us to the Chambre d'Amour, 
a cave at the foot of a cliff, and now nearly 
closed by the sands. The legend runs, that two 
lovers, Angele and Psycale, having resorted to 
this somewhat damp trysting-place, found them- 
selves surprised one day, not by the obdurate 



38 In the Shadow of the Pyrenees. 

parents, but by the still more remorseless tide, 
which put a summary end to their endearments 
and their hopes. Any disposition to become 
sentimental over this story receives an ex- 
tinguisher in the very matter-of-fact words of 
M. Ferret : "■ De la Chambre d' Amour, se 
voient les hauteurs d'Anglet ; la est un etab- 
lissement de fiUes repenties : a deux pas de la 
Chambre d Amour ^ voila le contraste ! " 



Biarritz. 39 



CHAPTER IV. 

BIARRITZ. 

" Und es wallet und siedet und brauset und zischt, 
Wie wenn Wasser mit Feuer sich mengt, 
Bis zum Himmel spritzet der dampfende Gischt, 
Und Fluth auf Fluth sich ohn' Ende drangt, 
Und will sich nimmer erschopfen und leeren, 
Als woUte das Meer noch ein Meer gebaren." — Schiller. 

BIARRITZ is neither French, English, 
Spanish, nor Basque-. As in all similar 
resorts, the local coloring is modified or washed 
out by successive waves of tourists. The shops 
are crowded closely together along the main 
street, which runs parallel with the sea. There 
are rich displays of dry goods and millinery, 
the varied daintiness of fancy stationery, heaps 
of bric-a-brac, and book-stores, where English, 
French, and Spanish titles appear cheek by 
jowl in the windows. The street is alive with 
carriages and loungers. The resplendent Bay- 
onnais coachman is offset by the soberly-clad. 



40 In the Shadow of the Pyrenees. 

cinctured Basque. It is too early for the Eng- 
lish. Only an occasional white helmet appears 
amid the crowd of less assertive '* tiles." The 
Britons will descend in swarms at the beginning 
of November. Later still, the Russians will 
appear ; as for the American, he is not at home 
here. Now, the Spaniard is in the ascendant. 
A crowd pervades the beaches and prom- 
enades, for which the more sober attractions 
of San Sebastian and Saint-Jean-de-Luz have 
no charms ; and the mantilla, which, alas ! is 
passing away, appears at Atalaye and the Cote 
des Basques, and the dark-eyed Spanish boys 
paddle their canoes in the Port-Vieux. 

From the main promenade a short, broad 
street turns sharply to the right, and leads past 
the end of the spacious Casino to the terrace 
overlooking the sea. You are the centre of an 
arc reaching round to Saint-Martin's lighthouse 
on the right, and to the promontory of Atalaye 
on the left ; the chord of the arc being formed 
by a broken line of rocks just outside the 
breakers. What Ariel is working out in these 
arches and tunnels and pinnacles the weird 



Biarritz. 4 1 

sea-dreams of Biscay ? It is a clear, bright 
day. The July sunshine pours down in floods, 
and only the lightest of breezes is astir, yet the 
surf is tremendous ; some gigantic thrust is 
pressing inward far beyond that glittering ho- 
rizon-line. It is not the final dash, with its 
great leaps of foam and showers of spray, which 
is most impressive, but rather the slow, majes- 
tic, relentless rise with which the surge gathers 
itself up, and sweeps on, noiselessly burying 
the outermost rocks, until, as the foam-beads 
begin to cluster on its crest, its pace quickens, 
and it throws itself upon the nearer rocks, pour- 
ing and spurting through unsuspected chinks 
and blow-holes, washing over the summits in 
sheets of foam, and then plunging headlong 
upon the fretted, creased, tortured cliffs which 
line the shore, racing, breaking, tearing, seeth- 
ing far back in the dismal caverns it has mined 
at their base, with an incessant, dull, smothered 
boom like distant artillery. As we lounge 
against the terrace-rail, J — — tells me he has 
seen the surf strike Saint-Martin, break over the 
bluff at a height of eighty-five feet, and then 



42 In the Shadow of the Pyrenees, 

run up the lighthouse tower to the lantern, more 
than a hundred and fifty feet higher. Down 
below it is breaking in long lines of white rollers 
on the Cote des Fous^ the great bathing-beach, 
with its long, red brick bath-house capped with 
two domes. Farther toward Saint-Martin rises 
the plain, square Villa Eugenie, built by Na- 
poleon in 1856 for the proud and beautiful 
Montijo, and now converted into a second-class 
Casino. 

The breakers of the Cote des Fous are alive 
with bright-colored bathing dresses, and the 
kickings and sprawlings of unpractised swim- 
mers are clearly visible through the clear sea- 
green of the surf. We turn to the left down 
the path at the foot of the Casino, over the 
chaos of rocks called la Chinaotigey and past 
two large stone enclosures into which the sea 
flows, and where oysters and fish are preserved. 
Some boys are swimming in the narrow passage 
between the walls, committing themselves to 
the strong current to be carried inward. Be- 
yond recedes the little Port aux Pechetirs. In 
front is Atalaye, the other "■ horn " of the bay, 



Biarritz, 43 

a low promontory, crowned with the ropes and 
cross-bars of a semaphore. 

The sun is making himself felt, so that one is 
tempted to envy the two horses down there in 
the shadow of that deep cavern at the base of 
the promontory, buried up to their necks in the 
cool, green water, and undergoing a washing at 
the hands of a groom. Yonder priest too has 
taken his books into the shade of the wall below 
the road, and is quietly reading there. The path 
suddenly burrows under the promontory by a 
tunnel some two hundred and fifty feet long. 
The moisture drips from the rocks above and 
around ; the air is damp and chill ; ' boom ! 
boom ! ' thunders the surf in the hideous cav- 
erns underneath ; the eye runs down the per- 
spective of the tunnel until it is caught by the 
conical rock — le Ciicurlon — pierced by an arch- 
way and surmounted by the Virgin Mother— 
Stella Maris — looking placidly down upon the 
Phlegethon below, and not out of reach of an 
occasional drenching, since the rock is chiselled 
into spirals by the waves to her very feet. 
Through the arch of le Cucurlon appears a 



44 I^ ih^ Shadow of the Pyrenees. 

ruined breakwater, which commemorates the 
unsuccessful attempt to form a new port, by 
connecting the promontory of Atalaye with 
some rocky islets by means of a dike formed of 
blocks of concrete. The terrible breakers of 
the winter of 1872-73 made wild work with the 
partly completed structure. Off the end lie the 
huge masses of masonry broken off by the surf, 
with the marks of the railroad-tracks still visible 
upon them. Now the surge, gathering with that 
grand, deliberate swell, bears down upon the 
surviving portion of the dike as though bent on 
completing the ruin, and pours creaming over 
the landward side in cascades of foam. The 
view from this point must take rank among the 
loveliest coast scenes of the world. No words 
can paint that wonderful sky, that blue vast of 
sea shimmering under the brilliant sunlight ; 
that exquisite atmosphere, softening every out- 
line ; those masses of white cloud hovering over 
the mountain crests ; that warm, tender haze, 
full of pulses of light, thinly veiling the distant 
shores. Falling back to the left into a magnifi- 
cent bay, the Cote des Basques ^ the coast sweeps 



Biarritz, 45 

round by Guethary and Saint-Jean-de-Luz to 
the entrance of the Bidassoa, where the two 
rocks of Sainte Anne face Jaizquibel, Cap Fig- 
uier, and Fuenterrabia across the river. Past 
Figuier the eye ranges on to Cap Machicaco be- 
hind which hides San Sebastian, and still on to 
the distant blue heights which overlook the val- 
ley of Nervion and Bilbao. A band of silver, 
following the grand curve from Biarritz to St. 
Anne, marks the wash of the surf, from which 
gentle slopes of green rise to meet the moun- 
tains of Navarre, Haya with its triple crown, 
Aran and Anie, and red La Rhune. 

A short climb over the rocks, and we are 
looking down into a little cove sheltered from 
the fury of the surf, and stirred only by the last 
struggles of dying waves. This is the Vieiix 
Port. Here congregate the bathers who shrink 
from the tremendous rollers of the Cote des 
Fous and of the Cote des Basques. Here are the 

** little wanton boys that swim on bladders," 

youngsters in bathing-dress navigating tottlish 
canoes amid the archipelago of bobbing heads, 



46 In the Shadow of the Pyrenees, 

and highly picturesque damsels practising their 
" striking out." A road leads round the head 
of the little bay and behind the bathing houses, 
and turns off to the left into a passage between 
rocks and over a bridge spanning a deep, narrow 
cleft worked far back into the cliff by the cease- 
less chafing of the surf. This is the Po7it du 
Diahle. Then two or three immense, sharp 
rocks point outward from the land, as if to say 
** See there ! " and we pass out into full view of 
the splendid curve of the Cote des Basques, with 
its huge rollers breaking on the broad beach. 
The whole geological structure seems to have 
changed in an instant. Instead of the fantastic, 
grooved, and pierced rocks of the Cote du Mou- 
lin and Atalaye, a precipice of gray clay rises 
almost perpendicularly behind the beach, as- 
cended by a series of zigzags. The distant view 
is the same as that from Atalaye ; the nearer 
view of course includes the inner side of the 
Cote des Basques, which cannot be seen from 
the former point. 

Hither, in the month of August, from the 
villages of Labourd, La Soule, and even of 



Biarritz. 47 

Basse Navarre, come the troops of Basques in 
holiday costume, crowned with flowers and rib- 
ands, and with their national instruments, the 
flageolet, tambourine, violin, and drum. They 
pervade Biarritz. In the streets and in the open 
places, everywhere groups may be seen forming 
to dance the mouchico ; and this ended, they 
climb down the clifls to the shore, disdaining 
the calmness of the Port Vieux, and not finding, 
even in the heavy rollers of the Cote des Fous, 
enough of dangerous excitement. The surge of 
the Cote des Basques is furious ; nothing breaks 
it, and it is fretted besides by the rocks of the 
bottom. Here then they stand, men and women, 
hand in hand in one long line, and with songs and 
their peculiar wild cries march out to meet the 
surf, running back after a few shocks to throw 
themselves on the sand in the sun, and rising 
again after their rest to plunge into the waves. 
But of the Basques, more hereafter. 



48 In the Shadow of the Pyrenees. 



CHAPTER V. 

SAINT-JEAN-DE-LUZ AND THE BOUNDARY. 

" That stood on a dark strait of barren land." — ^Tennyson. 

WE were so fascinated by the gigantic 
play of the surf and the grandeur of 
the view down the Cantabrian coast, that it was 
hard to climb the rocks from Atalaye under 
the blistering sun to the streets of Biarritz. If 
there is one need for which that town is con- 
spicuous, it is the need of shade on the public 
promenades. The view of the shady private 
gardens, under such circumstances, is pecu- 
liarly exasperating. But the coach was waiting 
at the stable in the busiest part of the busy 
street, and the cool breeze caused by its mo- 
tion speedily dispelled the languor of the sunny 
afternoon. The road lay for miles between 
rows of poplar, elm, and sycamore ; every turn, 
every ascent opened a fresh perspective of 



St^-yean-de-Luz and the Boundary. 49 

trees. The excitements of carriage-buying at 
Bayonne, and of the surf and scenery at Biar- 
ritz, had been too much for J , and, under 

the tranquillizing fumes of his cigarette and the 
easy motion of the carriage over the superb road, 
he slumbered peacefully and — sonorously. Ex- 
ample added force to inclination; and yet, it 
seemed almost sacrilege to doze in that gold- 
en sunshine, under that marvellous blue. But 
the drowsy fit passed off in due time. Jumping 
out for a walk, we disturbed the peace of a 
hulking countryman who had taken the oppor- 
tunity to steal a ride, though how he accom- 
plished the feat remains a mystery, for the only 
available place of lodgment behind the carriage 
was thickly studded with sharp iron points, on 
which an ordinarily constructed mortal would 
no sooner think of sitting down than on a heap 
of carpet-tacks. 

Saint-Jean-de-Luz, into the narrow street of 
which we were now driving, occupies a neck of 
land washed on one side by the sea, and on the 
other by the waters of the Nivelle. The high 
rocks of Sainte-Barbe, and the jetty and circular 
4 



50 In the Shadow of the Pyrenees. 

fort of Socoa, form the horns of the noble bay 
commanded by the sleepy little town, the re- 
pose of which is broken only by the annual 
inroad of the ubiquitous Briton, who finds 
there salt and seclusion. How different from 
the olden days. Some time in the eleventh 
century, it was the port of Ustaritz, the little 
capital of the feudal domain of Labourd. In 
those days the whale tossed up his flukes in the 
Cantabrian Gulf, and the Labourd Basques had 
been among the first, if not the first seamen in 
the world to attack him with the harpoon. It 
was a rendezvous of fishermen and explorers, 
whose descendants contest, to this day, with 
the partisans of the Venetian Cabot, the honor 
of discovering Newfoundland and Cape Breton. 
It was a nest of corsairs, formidable to men and 
to cities as to sea-monsters, and who left their 
bloody mark on Irun and Fuenterrabia, and 
chased the Spaniards as far as to the Mediter- 
ranean. At the beginning of the reign of Louis 
the Fourteenth, twelve thousand people filled 
its homes, and eighty vessels, manned by three 
thousand seamen, sallied forth to wage war with 



St,'-yean-de--Luz and the Boundary. 51 

the whale and the cod. Richelieu appealed to 
Saint-Jean-de-Luz when the He de Re was block- 
aded by the English fleet under Buckingham, 
and her response came to the besieged in the 
shape of fifteen armed vessels. Then the darker 
days drew on. The levies for the French fleet 
in 1669 included the Basque fishers, notwith- 
standing the exemption pledged them by their 
franchises ; and the wars which followed de- 
stroyed the greater part of the male population 
of the town. The peace of Utrecht, which de- 
prived France of Newfoundland, was another 
blow at Saint-Jean ; emigration commenced, and 
finally the sea itself turned traitor. The bay of 
Biscay, formed by the right angle at which the 
French and Spanish coasts join, constitutes a 
kind of funnel with its base opening toward the 
northwest. Into this opening drive the huge 
billows, propelled by the northwest wind across 
the whole, unbroken breadth of the Atlantic, 
striking the steep slopes of the Cantabrian 
coast, setting back into the deep water which 
washes their bases, and creating eddies and 
great bottom-waves which mine the shores with 



52 In the Shadow of the Pyrenees. 

the power of a million of drills. The headlands 
of Socoa and Sainte-Barbe gradually gave way 
under these repeated assaults ; the sea ad- 
vanced upon the town, in spite of the various 
expedients adopted to arrest it ; tempest fol- 
lowed tempest, until, in 1822, a fearful storm 
set in, and raged for eight days, utterly destroy- 
ing the immense and apparently impregnable 
dike which protected the harbor, and giving 
the coup-de-grace to the commercial prosperity 
of Saint-Jean. 

At the head of the little street lined with its 
white houses and projecting gables, stands the 
church of Saint-Jean-Baptiste. *' The patron of 
Saint-Jean-de-Luz," says M. Ferret, '* is a fore- 
runner : that is why his parishioners have al- 
ways been seen in the front, showing the way 
in their marine enterprises to sailors of other 
ports." As in all Basque communities, the 
church dominates the town. Its walls are bare, 
its windows small and high up, its belfry octa- 
gonal. Within, two ranges of galleries sur- 
round it on three sides, for the accommodation 
of worshippers of the sterner sex ; who thus sit 



St.-yean-de-Luz and the Boundary. 53 

comfortably apart on convenient seats, leaving 
the floor of the nave to the women, who are 
not furnished with chairs, but only with a sim- 
ple cushion of black cloth, broidered with a 
cross and placed on the floor. It has been ob^ 
served that this is one of several Basque cus- 
toms which, in indicating the religious and 
moral inferiority attached to women, goes to 
show the antiquity of the race. 

In the shadow of the gothic door on the 
southern side, one of the few remnants of the 
original structure, fancy peoples the street with 
the brilliant retinue of Mazarin, just arrived to 
negotiate the alliance between France and Spain, 
which Louis the Fourteenth sealed, a year later, 
by his espousal of the Infanta, Maria Theresa. 
He had run down secretly to Fuenterrabia, where 
the marriage was being celebrated by proxy, 
and had had a good look at his bride, who, 
however, saw through his incognito and blushed 
rosy-red, while Philip laughed and said, "I 
have a handsome son-in-law." Two days later 
the actual marriage was celebrated in this church 
of Saint-Jean-Baptiste. The north door, by 



54 /^ ihe Shadow of the Pyrenees. 

which the royal couple entered, is now walled 
up. The Infanta's residence was in that large 
building directly facing the bridge over the 
Nivelle, with a front formed by two square 
towers connected by arcaded galleries, and now 
known as the Chateau de L'lnfante. Over the 
door is the inscription : 

" L'Infante je re9us I'an mil six cent soixante, 
On m'appela depuis le Chateau de I'Infante." 

While the fair, blue-eyed Infanta within these 
walls was eagerly rummaging the gold-bound 
coffer containing the King's wedding gift, 
what of poor Marie de Mancini in her exile 
at dismal Brouages, among the marshes and 
salt-works ? What of this very Louis, the 
bridegroom of the morrow, in that quaint old 
house near by, with its dormers and corbel 
towers ? Was there a heart-ache at Saint-Jean 
as well as at Brouages ? What did it matter ? 
What cared Mazarin for one heart-ache, or two, 
or a hundred ? And yet Louis must have 
writhed a little at that parting puncture from 



St.-yean-de-Luz and the Boundary. 55 

the woman who had loved him so well. '' You 
are a king ; you weep, yet I go." 

J wants to go, too. He is not in a his- 
toric mood ; he is in a hurry to reach Spain, 
and, besides, he is thirsty. The cafe, fronting 
on a large, shaded, ill-kept square, is irresist- 
ible ; and the enjoyment of the gazeuse is varied 
by the study of natural history in the persons 
and antics of some enormous black goats, verit- 
able prodigies, which appear to have the free- 
dom of the city, and are as prodigious to the 
smell as to the eye. The road crosses the 
Nivelle, which is wrestling just now with the 
incoming tide. On the left, the green, wooded 
and vine-clad slopes, dotted here and there with 
the red and white houses of the Basque peas- 
ants, rise in successive stages to the first but- 
tresses of La Rhune, with its slender peak top- 
ping its granite masses. The shaded road again, 
and Urrugne, with its fifteenth-century church, 
whose clock, with its arrow-shaped hands, bears 
the motto, Vulnerant omnes^ ultima necat. 
Now the Bidassoa, marking the boundary line 
between France and Spain, and the little town 



56 In the Shadow of the Pyrenees. 

of Behobie, and the international bridge, and 
the Spanish guard-house, where our driver must 
stop and procure his " permit " for traversing 
the roads of Guipuzcoa. Just where the Bidas- 
soa widens and the sand-banks give place to 
ugly banks of mud, revealed by the low tide, 
appears the little lie des Faisans^ a mere patch 
in the stream — '' not so long," says Gautier, 
** as a fried sole of a small species" — and in- 
debted to the accident of its position on the 
boundary line for its historic importance, as the 
scene of sundry royal conferences and treaties, 
notably of the four months' negotiations which 
ended in the Franco-Spanish treaty of 1659 and 
the marriage of Louis the Fourteenth and Maria 
Theresa. A white monument gleams among 
the trees, which has, as M. Ferret observes, the 
air of a mausoleum, and which bears the fol- 
lowing inscription in French and Spanish : Eft 
memoir e des coftfe'rences de 1659, dans lesquelles 
Louis XIV. et Philippe IV., par tine heureuse 
alliance J mirent fin a une longue guerre entre 
les deux nations, Napoleon III., empereur des 
Franqais, et Isabelle, reine des Espagnes, out 



St.-yean-de-Luz and the Boundary. 57 

re'tabli cette tie, Van 1861. A gorgeous spec- 
tacle the little island must have presented on the 
third of June, 1660. According to Montpensier, 
a temporary palace rose among the trees ; a 
bridge connected the island with the mainland 
on either frontier. The bridges, forming cov- 
ered galleries, were precisely alike, and led to 
two saloons, splendidly furnished and decorated, 
having lateral chambers and dressing-rooms ; 
while, in the exact centre, calculated to an inch 
of surface, was the spacious hall of meeting, 
lighted only on the riverward side. Two doors 
of entrance, precisely opposite to each other, 
enabled the two great contracting parties to 
make a simultaneous entrance ; while the floor, 
divided in a straight line across the centre, was 
covered, on the Spanish side, with Persian car- 
pets, wrought on a ground of gold and silver. 
In each compartment were placed an arm-chair 
and a table ; and upon the latter stood two ink- 
stands and two time-pieces. 

Evening is drawing on. The long shadows 
fall from Haya, and the clouds hang low on the 
sides of Jaizquibel. Fuenterrabia looms darkly 



58 In the Shadow of the Pyrenees. 

above its crumbling battlements ; a few purple 
gleams touch the bristling rocks of Cap Fig- 
uier, and linger on the glassy surface of the 
Bidassoa ; the red ray from the pharos of 
Figuier answers the blaze of the Fresnel on 
Saint-Martin's. We are in Spain. 



On the Frontier. 59 



CHAPTER VI. 

ON THE FRONTIER. 

" Est modus in rebus, sunt certi denique fines, 
Quos ultra citraque nequit consistere rectum." — Horace. 

MOST modern travellers will enter Spain 
by rail ; in which case they must run 
the custom-house gauntlet at Irun. A hint to 
you, unwary tourist, booked through from Paris 
to Madrid. Trust not that passage in Mr. Henry 
O'Shea's most valuable and generally accurate 
guide-book which saith that luggage, regis- 
tered through, is examined only on the arrival 
at Madrid ; otherwise you shall wake at Madrid 
with your luggage four hundred miles behind 
you, to be confronted with the tears and re- 
proaches of one or more females with nothing 
to wear. The words Del Norte on the railway 
carriages announce that you have struck the 
great artery which carries the life-blood of mod- 
ern Europe to the heart of Spain. You must 



6o In the Shadow of the Pyrenees, 

change carriages. A ''through carriage" is 
impossible in the nature of the case. The 
gauge is altered with a view to a possible 
French invasion. The building of the new 
station is proceeding in leisurely fashion. Man 
after man ascends the ladders with a little con- 
tribution of stones or mortar, and with an edify- 
ing deliberation. The trunks are carried one at 
a time by a line of porters to the custom-house. 
The passengers crowd through the narrow gate- 
way. The grave, swarthy, mustachioed offi- 
cials go through their duty with exasperating 
and incorruptible punctiliousness. Do not try 
a " tip," it is thrown away. The grim func- 
tionary lifts tray after tray, and peers solemnly 
and knowingly into the abysses where repose 

"Much linen, lace, and several pair 

Of stockings, slippers, brushes, combs, complete; 
With other articles of ladies fair, 

To keep them beautiful or leave them neat," 

and occasionally thrusts a hand into the sacred 
depths, and upheaves the substrata. Can you 
speak Spanish ? No, but French. What of 
that ? Do you reason, good friend, that a 



On the Frontier. 6i 

Spanish official on the French frontier ought to 
be able to speak French ? Alas, the Spanish 
official does not admit your premiss. Is it from 
the old Moorish invaders that the Spaniard has 
caught something of that fatalistic tendency of 
the Oriental to fall in with the current and ac- 
cept things as they are ? Why should he learn 
the tongues of the men who come to visit him ? 
Why should they not speak his tongue ? At 
any rate, it is better to get up even a lit- 
tle Spanish for travelling ; for be it said here 
that a traveller in Spain is at greater disadvan- 
tage from ignorance of the language than in 
most other parts of Western Europe. 

We shall not change carriages, for we are to 
stop here at Irun. This Spanish sun, which 
even the proximity of the mountains and the 
sea does not entirely mitigate, makes Sefior 
Garviso's shady parlor, with its polished chest- 
nut floor, a welcome refuge, and the cosy noon 
breakfast is a welcome refreshment to appetites 
whetted by a long morning ride. Among the 
items of the pleasant chat which circulates 
round the breakfast table, is the assertion of the 



62 In the Shadow of the Pyrenees, 

Sefior, who is a -Basque, that both *' Yankee 
Doodle" and "God save the Queen" are of 
Basque origin. As respects the former, it is a 
relief to a patriotic American to learn that his 
country is, at least, not responsible for the gen- 
eration of that atrocity, however she may be 
for its adoption. Through the window appears 
the public square, with the market-women sell- 
ing fruit in the shadow of the handsome town- 
hall, and a little way down the descending street 
is one of the institutions of every Basque town, 
however small, — the ball-court, which is simply 
a square with a high wall at one end. The 
national game oi pelota is to the Basque what 
cricket is to the Englishman or base -ball to 
the American. His love for it amounts to a 
passion. It is related that, in the time of the 
Empire, fourteen Basque soldiers of a certain 
regiment encamped on the Rhine, having learned 
that a game was to be played at Saint-Etienne- 
de-Baigorry, about eighteen miles from Cambo, 
left the ranks without permission, won the game, 
and returned just in time for the battle of Aus- 
terhtz. They will travel all night on foot in 



On the Frontier, ' 6^ 

order to take part in the play, and return the 
following night after a day of wild excitement 
and violent exercise. The name of a champion 
pelotist flies on the wings of fame from the 
ocean to the highest cottages on the mountains. 
When these tournaments are celebrated at im- 
portant points, and the '* crack " players of the 
Spanish Basques have accepted the challenge 
of the champions of Ustaritz, Cambo, and Saint- 
Jean-de-Luz, the crowd of spectators is enor- 
mous, and the enthusiasm is in striking contrast 
with the ordinary saturnine habit of the Basque. 
Nor do these champions represent only the 
lower order, but number among themselves 
proprietors and official dignitaries ; and even 
the abbes cheerfully substitute the blouse for 
the cassock, and enter the lists with their par- 
ishioners. The ordinary game consists in throw- 
ing the ball against the wall, allowing it to come 
to the ground, and then striking it with the 
hand at the first bound, and sending it back to 
the wall. The test of skill is, of course, the 
number of times that the player can drive it 
back to the wall without missing that first 



64 /^ the Shadow of the Pyrenees. 

bound. Another form of the game requires 
the use of a peculiar glove, to the back of which, 
and projecting about a foot from the ends of 
the fingers, is attached a sort of scoop made of 
wicker, and somewhat resembling the fore-part 
of a snow-shoe. The ball, as it rebounds, is 
caught in this scoop, and the greater leverage 
thus gives increased power to the throw. The 
art consists in letting the ball, as it comes back 
from the wall, nearly exhaust the force of the 
rebound, and then giving it the forward throw 
at the instant when the contrary impulse is 
weakest. The force with which a practised 
hand will hurl the ball is amazing. 

On our way to visit the parish church, the 
Sefior, whose name graces the list of the 
mayors of the town, pointed with just pride to 
a large and neat school-building erected mainly 
by his efforts, and remarked, '' I would rather 
have done that than to have built a bull-ring ; " 
an observation which, it need hardly be said, 
had a special force in Spain, where the founder 
of a Plaza de Toros would be regarded with 
much the same veneration which attached, in 



On the Frontier. 65 

Bible times, to the man who dug a well. In- 
deed, in the matter of public instruction, this 
province of Guipuzcoa is one of the most ad- 
vanced in Spain. The university of Onate has 
existed since 1 540, and the royal college of Ver- 
gara since 1764. There is a provincial Institute 
at San Sebastian, where pupils are prepared for 
the special schools which are found at Tolosa, 
Irun, and elsewhere ; and there are free public 
schools for both sexes in all the towns of the 
province, and male and female teachers in the 
smallest villages. In the towns, elementary in- 
struction is compulsory, and the police may be 
seen conducting the vagabond children to the 
schools. 

From the school we descend to the church. 
The Basque churches follow one general model, 
which gives to the exterior a somewhat bare 
and forbidding look. The walls are very high, 
and the windows small and pierced high up 
toward the eaves. There may sometimes be 
seen in different parts of the wall, loopholes for 
musketry, telling the story of a militant church, 
which has served as a fortress no less than as a 
5 



66 In the Shadow of the Py7'enees. 

spiritual refuge. Often the portals are elabo- 
rate, like those at Hernani and Renteria, and 
the building is commonly furnished with a low 
porch, either in front or on one side. The in- 
terior, not unfrequently, affords an agreeable 
surprise by the greater dignity of line than the 
outside would have led one to expect. The 
choir, as in most of the smaller Spanish 
churches, is over the main entrance and facing 
the high altar, like the "singers' gallery" in 
the old New England " meeting-houses." The 
decoration is almost invariably tawdry, and its 
principal splendors are concentrated upon the 
chancel, at the rear of which, and behind the 
altar, rises the retablo, a huge structure of 
columns and panels richly gilded, often mount- 
ing nearly to the ceiling, and covered with 
carvings representing some series of sacred 
incidents, such as the life of our Lord. The 
Irun church is in the form of a Greek cross, and 
the front is scarred with the reminders of the 
Carlist bombardment of 1874. The fine tribune 
forms an elliptical curve ; the ceiling is in large 
semi-circular arches with double ' mouldings, 



On the Frontier, 6y 

and resting upon cylindrical columns ; but the 
decoration is hideous and suggestive of a wall- 
paper shop rather than of a church. 

Stopping for a moment as we came out, to in- 
spect two quaint tombs in front of the church, 
we took carriage for a drive to Fuenterrabia, 
about two miles distant. The road led over a 
fertile little plain by a causeway, making a 
detour to avoid the canals which are filled by 
the tide, and then under the flank of Jaizquibel 
to the promontory at the mouth of the Bidassoa, 
on which sits the odd little town, snugly packed 
within its ruinous walls. Its history dates back 
to the tenth century. Its frontier position ex- 
posed it to the first shocks of French invasions, 
and its annals are full of sieges. We drove 
slowly round the walls, which everywhere re- 
vealed great breaks and cracks and loosened 
stones with grass growing between, until the 
horses stopped near a small, shady park, flanked 
by a stream where some youngsters, in a state 
of nature, were displaying their amphibious 
qualities by diving for coppers. The lair of the 
** tiger*' was close at hand, near the city gate ; 



68 In the Shadow of the Pyrenees. 

in other words, the antique flavor of Fuenter- 
rabia Is qualified by a decidedly modern ktirsaal, 
the property of a company, and in charge, it is 
said, of one of the former celebrities of Baden- 
Baden. A gambling license of thirty years 
was granted it, but it is now closed. A narrow 
arched gate leads into the city, before which 
one IS arrested by the cabalistic inscription, 
'' Fuenterrabia, la M. N : M. L : M. V: y M. 
S. py A Daniel is at hand in the person of 

J , who interprets as follows: '^ Fuenter- 

rabia, la muy noble, muy leal, muy valorosa, y 
miiy siempre fiel ;'' that is to say, **Fuenter- 
rabia, the very noble, very loyal, very brave, 
and always faithful.*' 

We enter the narrow, ascending street, and 
ask ourselves if this is not a dream. '* Rien 
de plus saisissant," says M. Joanne, and justly. 
We are between two rows of houses blackened 
with age, the huge eaves reaching out toward 
each other across the street, supported on dou- 
ble and sometimes triple tiers of elaborately 
carved brackets ; their grated windows of both 
stories opening on massive balconies of richly 



On the Frontier, 69 

wrought iron, supported sometimes on stone 
corbels, and sometimes on immense iron brack- 
ets running diagonally from the front of the 
balcony to the wall. Over these droop the yel- 
low, blue, gray, white window shades. The 
first, general impression is that of a chaos of 
gracefully wrought iron and carved wood, in- 
terspersed with patches of color. The heavy 
escutcheons bulge from the house-fronts like 
enormous warts. Below are the sombre shops, 
above, on the balconies, occasional glimpses of 
a white hand behind the jalousies, or of a por- 
tion of a figure in a mantilla. ** C'est le decor 
du Barbier de Seville, c'est la comedie espa- 
gnole — un morceau de I'Espagne du 16^ siecle 
pieusement conserve par les archeologues." ^ 

At the head of the street stands the church, 
with its renaissance tower rising above the roofs 
of the town. The gothic interior, rendered 
more sombre by the walling up of some of the 
windows and the grating of others on the side 
toward the river, is marked by the usual display 

1 Perret. 



i«^ 



70 In the Shadow of the Pyrenees. 

of tawdry gilding which characterizes the Basque 
churches, and by the elevated seats reserved for 
male worshippers. A glass case at one of the 
side altars contains what purports to be a lock 
of the church of the Holy Sepulchre at Jeru- 
salem, presented by a townsman. A side door 
admits to a little court or platform opening on 
the river. The view from this point is charm- 
ing. Beneath are the shoal-streaked waters of 
the Bidassoa, and the stone column in the 
midst of the stream marking the frontier line ; 
beyond, to the left, appear the rocks of Sainte 
Anne, then Behobie and the international 
bridge, the tree-tops of the He des Faisans ; 
above, the hermitage and fort of St. Martial, 
under cover of whose batteries Wellington ef- 
fected the passage of the Bidassoa in 1813 ; 
Hendaye and the slopes of the Croix des Bou- 
quets ; to the right, the little plain of Irun, with 
its grain-fields and canals, and behind all the 
imposing masses of La Rhune and Haya. 



The Basques, 71 



CHAPTER VII. 

THE BASQUES. 

Cantaber sera domitus catena. — Horace. 

A LEARNED Scotch divine, commenting 
upon a vexed passage of Scripture, re- 
marked that " the varieties of exposition were 
enough to afflict the student with intellectual 
paralysis." The same might be truthfully said 
of the question of the origin of the Basques. 
A hundred and thirty years after the deluge, 
say the old Spanish historians. Tubal, the son 
of Japhet, to whom was assigned the duty of 
peopling Europe, arrived on the Cantabrian 
coast, from which his descendants spread over 
the neighboring territories. The Basques thus 
claim descent directly from Adam and Eve, and 
declare that they speak the language which 
Noah received from Adam. 

Theories are plenty as blackberries. The 
Basques are a remnant of the population of the 



72 In the Shadow of the Pyrenees. 

vanished Atlantis ; they came in with the hosts 
of Attila, Gengis, and Tamerlane ; they are 
related to the Finns ; they are the debris of the 
Iberians, the primitive people of Spain ; they 
are descendants of the Phoenicians ; they issued 
from Latium in Italy ; they are akin to the Ber- 
bers of Africa ; they were Semitic emigrants in 
company with Phoenicians, who were the pro- 
moters and media of their migrations; and who, 
traversing the Mediterranean, and doubling 
Gibraltar, reached the Cantabrian provinces. 

The reader may take his choice. I shall not 
trouble him nor myself with a discussion of the 
comparative merits of these theories ; but in at- 
tempting a brief sketch of the history and pecu- 
liarities of this remarkable race, I start from 
the conclusion of Humboldt, Thierry, Quatre- 
fages, Elisee Reclus, Cenac Moncaut, and 
Professor Edward Freeman, which is that the 
Basques are the remnant of the Iberians, the 
primitive people of Spain, who are supposed 
to have extended beyond Spain into Gaul, 
Sicily, a part of Italy, and perhaps as far north 
as England. 



The Basques. 73 

Upon the invasion of the Celts, some sixteen 
hundred years B.C., by which the Iberian abor- 
igines were either exterminated or fused with 
their conquerors under the name of Celtiber- 
ians, a small number who escaped extermina- 
tion and refused alliance, betook themselves to 
the westernmost point of the Pyrenees, and there 
formed little confederated republics. 

Phoenicians, Greeks, Egyptians, Carthagin- 
ians, successively poured into the Peninsula. 
Hamilcar, with Hasdrubal and Hannibal, the 
latter a boy of nine years, crossed the straits of 
Gibraltar about 236 B.C. The Carthaginians 
gradually gained possession of the south of 
the Peninsula, and concluded a treaty with 
Rome, 228 B.C., the Ebro being the northern 
boundary of the Hispano-Carthaginian empire. 
Eight years more, and under the vigorous ad- 
ministration .of Hannibal, all Spain south of the 
Ebro was subject or allied to Carthage, ex- 
cepting Saguntum, which yielded after a siege 
of eight months. The Punic wars followed, 
and, with the destruction of Carthage, the 
Phoenician civilization vanished from the bor- 



74 ^^ ih^ Shadow of the Pyrenees. 

ders of the Mediterranean. Not satisfied with 
their conquest, the Romans followed their 
enemies into all their ports of refuge, and then 
attacked those communities in the interior which 
were in sympathy with Carthage, encouraging 
the old antipathies between the provinces, 
mingling in their intrigues, taking their soldiers 
into their pay, and plundering them remorse- 
lessly. 

During nearly two hundred years, the in- 
habitants of this little mountain-corner of the 
Cantabrian Gulf, or Bay of Biscay, remained un- 
subdued, entering into the great Cantabrian 
league with the Celtiberians, which was alter- 
nately the ally and the enemy of Rome, but 
never subject to it. 

At last Augustus Caesar seriously set himself 
to subjugate them. Descending the Adour, 
and joining his fleet, possibly at Bayonne, he 
proceeded to the Cantabrian coast, and having 
made himself master of Segisama in Asturias, 
he directed some regiments against the Can- 
tabrians. True to their favorite tactics, these 
hardy tribes, avoiding battle, omitted no op- 



The Basques, y^ 

portunity of harassing their foe, and were so 
successful in cutting off supplies, that Augustus, 
at one time, feared the destruction of his troops 
by famine. " Every forest became an ambus- 
cade, every precipice a tomb," until the 
Emperor, worn out with fatigue, fell sick and 
retired to Tarragona. 

To be thus successfully defied by a body of 
savage mountaineers, was to the last degree 
exasperating to this petted minion of Fortune. 
He undertook a war of extermination, and all 
prisoners were put to death with tortures. The 
impatience of the Cantabrians for vengeance at 
last overcame their caution ; they gave battle, 
were defeated, and withdrew thereupon to 
Mount Vinnio, in Galicia, the summits of which 
rise more than nine thousand feet above the 
sea, boasting that the waters of the Atlantic 
should reach them sooner than the Romans. 
Their boast, however, was vain ; Roman per- 
sistence drove them even from this refuge, 
from which they retreated to the town of 
Araceli, the modern Huarte Araquil, about 
twenty-four miles northwest of Pamplona. 



"J 6 In the Shadow of the Pyrenees. 

Pressed by siege, they finally abandoned the 
town, which the Romans set on fire, and be- 
took themselves to a neighboring height from 
which they looked down on the conflagration, 
and when finally summoned to surrender, they 
killed each other amid the lurid glare of the 
flames, preferring death to captivity. 

An attempt was now made to unite three 
Cantabrian armies against the Romans, and the 
invaders had nearly fallen into the snare, when 
the movement was discovered. The Asturians 
were attacked before they could effect a junc- 
tion with the Vascons, and at Vellica, near the 
sources of the Ebro, the Romans gained a bloody 
victory. 

Augustus soon discovered that his conquest 
was likely to prove a troublesome one. To 
defeat these stubborn freemen, was one thing ; 
to govern them and levy tribute, was quite 
another. Notwithstanding the precautions of 
his general, ^milius, in building numerous fort- 
resses among the mountains, his forces were con- 
stantly harassed by unexpected sallies from the 
rocky fastnesses. Another confederation was 



The Basques. yj 

formed, and a whole Roman army was des- 
troyed. The confederation was dispersed in 
turn, the Asturians submitted, the others 
were crushed. Some of them were taken to 
Rome as prisoners, escaped, returned to their 
country, and formed a new league, which was 
dispersed by Agrippa. The tribes which com- 
posed it finally abandoned their territory to 
the Romans. Henceforth the resistance en- 
trenched itself in the west oi the Pyrenees, in 
what are now the provinces of Navarre, Gui- 
puzcoa, and Vizcaya. 

During the first centuries of the Christian 
era, the Basques allied with the Romans, aided 
them in the wars in Gaul, but retired to their 
mountains before the hordes of Barbarians 
which overran the Empire of the Caesars. Iso- 
lated and unsubdued amid the floods of Alans, 
Suevi and Vandals which swept over Spain 
during the first half of the fifth century ; re- 
fusing to be incorporated with the great West- 
Gothic Kingdom which, with Toulouse as its 
capital, stretched from the Pillars of Hercules 
to the Loire and Garonne ; their subsequent 



^8 In the Shadow of the Pyrenees. 

embroilment with the Goths, and their defeat 
on the plains of Navarre, only drove them deep- 
er into their ancestral fastnesses, whither their 
enemies dared not pursue them. 

Nor could the Moors, the conquerors of the 
Gothic Empire, penetrate into the Basque coun- 
try. They occupied Pamplona, but did not 
attempt the rocks of Alava and Guipuzcoa. 
Converted to Christianity through their contact 
with the Goths, the Basques lost no oppor- 
tunity to war with Islamism. The Saracens, 
crossing the Pyrenees, had no sooner penetra- 
ted into Aquitaine, than they were pursued by 
the Cantabrian mountaineers, who arrived dur- 
ing the memorable battle of Tours (2), carrying 
confusion into the Islamite camp, burning their 
chariots, and contributing greatly to the vic- 
tory of the Christiars. 

Two years later they cut to pieces, in the 
defiles of the Pyrenees, a Saracen force under 
Abder- Ahmet, who attempted to penetrate into 
Aquitaine in order to avenge the disaster of 
Tours. 

Toward the close of the eighth century, 



The Basques. 79 

Charlemagne availed himself of the invitation 
of a Saracen prince from Zaragoza, to take ad- 
vantage of the dissensions of the Moors. He 
captured Pamplona and Zaragoza in 'J^'^y sub- 
jugated the country as far as the Ebro, and 
formed it into a Spanish viceroyalty. On his 
return, the Basques fell upon his rear-guard in 
the valley of Roncesvalles, rolling down upon 
them enormous rocks from their ambuscade, 
and slaying many of the bravest noblemen, 
among them Roland, Count of the March of 
Brittany. Above the scene of this slaughter 
rises the peak of Altabizcar to a height of near- 
ly five thousand feet. The Basques still make 
the mountains echo with the " song of Altabiz- 
car," which commemorates the victory of Ron- 
cevaux, and the manuscript of which is alleged 
to have been found in a convent at Fuenter- 
rabia (3). A long struggle between the Basques 
and the Franks followed this disaster. 

The Spanish monarchy, building itself up 
province by province, gradually encroached 
upon the independence of the Basques. Se- 
parated from the rest of the Peninsula no less 



8o In the Shadow of the Pyrenees, 

by natural barriers than by language and cus- 
toms, they nevertheless became, by a succes- 
sion of circumstances, the allies of the kings of 
Castile and Aragon. Guipuzcoa, in the thir- 
teenth century, accepted the sovereignty of 
Alphonso the Eighth, and furnished to Ferdi- 
nand the Third and Jacques the First, of Ara- 
gon, volunteers who served against the Moors. 
Alava united itself in 1332 to the crown of Cas- 
tile, by a formal contract, and Vizcaya followed 
in 1390. 

A few words should be said at this point con- 
cerning the fueroSy which, from the time of the 
voluntary incorporation of the Basques with the 
kingdom of Castile and Aragon, up to 1876, 
entered very prominently into their history. 
A fuero was a charter formally recognizing 
and defining liberties and privileges which had 
been long taken for granted ; in return for 
which the party receiving it became pledged to 
fidelity, and to certain specified services to the 
general administration. These charters, from 
the eleventh century, entered into the adminis- 
tration of the whole Peninsula, and their number 



The Basques, . 8i 

was greatly multiplied during the two following 
centuries ; but with the centralization of the 
Spanish power, the local fueros gradually gave 
way. Charles the Fifth first ventured to en- 
croach upon them in the interest of the crown ; 
and with the reign of Philip the Second, they 
ceased to exist in Spain, except in Navarre and 
in the Basque provinces, where they were stub- 
bornly insisted on, and were confirmed by suc- 
cessive sovereigns. Each province had a distinct 
set of fueros, but the main features were the 
same in all. The provinces formed a confedera- 
tion of small republics, ruled by chiefs elected 
among themselves, and having their own house 
of commons, tariffs, police, and army. The sover- 
eigns, on their accession, appeared before the 
provincial assembly and swore to maintain the 
charters. Among the privileges conveyed by 
these was exemption from all imposts save those 
which were self-imposed for local purposes, and 
from all duties on imported merchandise. They 
were not obliged to appear before any tribunal 
beyond the bounds of their own seignory, nor 
to tolerate the presence of any royal superin- 



82 In the Shadow of the Pyrenees. 

tendent or comptroller ; they were exempt 
from all royal monopolies, such as that of 
tobacco ; no royal establishment except the 
post-office could be set up within the territory, 
no royal troops could be admitted without per- 
mission, and no conscription for the royal 
army was tolerated. Added to these was the 
patent of universal nobility attaching to the 
mere fact of birth within these provinces. 
Every Basque was a nobleman because he was 
a Basque. The reader will recall the encounter 
of Don Quixote with the Biscayan, and the ire 
of the latter on being told that he was no 
gentleman. *' What ! me no gentleman ! I 
swear thou be a liar, as me be Christian. If 
thou throw away lance and draw sword, me will 
make no more of thee than cat does of mouse ; 
me will show thee me be Biscayan, and gentle- 
man by land, gentleman by sea, gentleman in 
spite of devil ; and thou lie if thou say contrary." 
'* Among the Basques," says Joanne, '' each 
one is the equal of the richest, each one is the 
equal of the poorest, each one enjoys, from time 
immemorial, not the same privileges but the 



The Basques. ^t^ 

same rights, and those the ones which, with 
time, have become the common right of modern 
Europe : equality of all before the law ; exemp- 
tion from all servitude and from all subjection, 
and the absolute respect of person and prop- 
erty." 

When Ferdinand the Seventh appeared likely 
to die without issue, the absolutists of Spain 
began to turn their attention to the matter of 
the succession, and matured a scheme for induc- 
ing the king to abdicate in favor of his brother, 
Don Carlos. This was the origin of the Carlist 
party. Ferdinand contracted, in 1829, a fourth 
marriage with Maria Christina of Naples, and 
decreed the next year the abolition of the 
Salic law, soon after which Isabella was born. 
In 1833 she was publicly declared her father's 
successor, with Christina as regent, and Don 
Carlos, with many of his followers, was expelled 
from the kingdom. Ferdinand's death, the 
same year, was followed by a long and bloody 
civil war lasting for seven years. The first act 
of the young Queen's guardian. Senator Cas- 
tanos, was to abolish the fueros, a proceeding 



84 /^ the Shadow of the Pyrenees, 

which threw the Basques into the party of Don 
Carlos. Isabella, on her accession, confirmed 
the fueros, and the Basque provinces remained 
tranquil from 1840 until the revolution of 1868, 
which dethroned her. The succeeding provi- 
sional government, Don Amadeo, and the re- 
public, alike promised to maintain the fueros ; so 
also did Alfonso the Twelfth, the present sover- 
eign ; but the Basques organized an armed rebel- 
lion in the interest of Don Carlos, the grandson 
of the former pretender, and the result, at the 
close of the war in 1876, was the final aboli- 
tion of the fueros, and the occupation of the 
principal points in the provinces by Spanish 
troops. 

The history of the French Basques is less 
eventful. Up to the end of the last century, 
the French government had remained almost a 
stranger to this people. Having no powerful 
dukes or ambitious counts who could menace 
the authority of the sovereign, it mattered little 
to the French kings that the Basques main- 
tained an independent administration, which, if 
it did not acknowledge the royal authority, at 



The Basques. 85 

least did not contest it. Moreover, while the 
Basque provinces of Spain contained important 
towns, such as Vittoria, Fuenterrabia, Tolosa, 
Pamplona, San Sebastian, the country of the 
French Basques had only villages. It offered 
no commercial advantages, its inhabitants were 
poor, and neither fiscal revenues nor commer- 
cial profits were to be looked for. On the \ 
other hand, they asked no favors except to be 
let alone, to live in their own way and in their 
traditional obscurity. Thus, even under the 
reign of Louis the Fourteenth, so jealous of his 
authority, no one was at pains to inform himself 
of their affairs or to meddle with their quarrels. 
Some local collisions indeed arose out of at- 
tempts to subject them to royal monopolies or 
taxes. A bloody tragedy, which the reader 
will find related at length in M. Taine's " Pyre- 
nees," grew out of the effort of Pe de Puyane, 
the mayor of Bayonne, to exact the cider-tax. 
He seized five of the recu^nts, and tying them 
to the piles of the bridge at low tide, left them 
to a lingering death in the presence of a jeering 
crowd of Bayonnais ; but the same night, two 



86 In the Shadow of the Pyre7iees. 

hundred Basques, infuriated by the cruel deed, 
surrounded the toll-tower which commanded 
the bridge, scaled the wall with the aid of 
their knives and finger-nails, and butchered 
the sixty soldiers whom they found carousing 
within. 

The Revolution of 1789 inaugurated their 
unification with France. They adjusted them- 
selves without much difficulty to the national 
administration. They furnished Napoleon the 
First some brave soldiers and able officers, and 
remained secretly faithful to him during the Pen- 
insular war. Under the Restoration, they gave 
a new proof of their love of independence and 
of their ancestral territory. The French Gov- 
ernment having conceded to Spain a portion of 
the frontier where the Basques had been accus- 
tomed to pasture their flocks, and of which, in 
the absence of official boundary lines and from 
long occupation, they regarded themselves as 
the rightful possessors, they at first protested, 
and then encamped in arms on the disputed ter- 
ritory. The French minister promised the ab- 
rogation of the treaty. They declared that they 



The Basques, 87 

would wait until the first of May, 1830, and that 
then, if they did not receive justice, they would 
obtain it for themselves. At the appointed 
time, two thousand armed Basques occupied 
the ground, vowing that they would shoot any 
Spaniard who should interfere with their pastur- 
age, and would avenge, by the burning of mon- 
asteries and convents, any attacks upon their 
ancient possession. The Spanish Government 
sent troops from Pamplona. Whether any 
collision took place is uncertain ; if not, it 
was doubtless avoided by new assurances in 
formal terms, securing the rights which they 
claimed, and which were subsequently de- 
fined by the official determination of the boun- 
dary. 

At present the government of France is ac- 
cepted without protest, because it does not 
press hardly upon them, nor seriously interfere 
with their customs or their independence. 
Taxes are relatively light ; rents are lower than 
elsewhere ; necessary articles they obtain at a 
low price ; as for such things as sugar, coffee, 
and tobacco, they manage, notwithstanding bri- 



88 In the Shadow of the Pyrenees. 

gades of custom-house officers, to procure them 
in Spain at moderate rates. 

Nevertheless, the work of unification is re- 
tarded by their insuperable horror of enforced 
military service. The conscription records show 
that the number of recusants in the Basses-Py- 
renees is equal to two-fifths, and sometimes to 
one-half of those of all the rest of France. Even 
when they are enlisted, desertions are frequent. 
They do not conceal themselves, they do not 
resist official authority, but the younger, braver, 
and more intelligent Basques choose exile in 
preference to conscription. The number of 
French Basques who embark every year for 
Montevideo, Buenos Ayres, and other South 
American towns, amounts to two thousand. 
Fifty or sixty thousand are settled on the bor- 
ders of the Rio de la Plata. Many also go to 
seek employment in the great cities, in Bor- 
deaux, Toulouse, Bilbao ; and marriage, and 
change of habits and of language do their cus- 
tomary work in modifying the original charac- 
teristics ; while the railroad, and the contact with 
tourists at Cambo, Biarritz, Saint-Jean-de-Luz, 



The Basques, 89 

Ustaritz, and Guethary, are combining with 
these to complete the work of fusion. The 
days of the Basques as a distinct nationaUty 
are practically numbered. In Spain, the pro- 
cess is accelerated by the decree which re- 
quires the use of the Spanish language in the 
schools. 



90 In the Shadow of the Pyrenees, 



CHAPTER VIII, 

EUSCALDANAC. 

"These are very bitter words," — Shakspeare. 

THE Basques call themselves Euscaldanac^ 
which is said to mean " a strong hand," 
and their language Eskara or Euskara. Upon 
the question of its origin, which is involved in 
the same obscurity with that of the origin of the 
people themselves, this is not the place to enter. 
Suffice it to say that its affinities, so far as they 
can be traced, seem to point to remote oriental 
sources. It has no likeness whatever to any of 
the. dialects of Southern Europe. A Spaniard 
and a Basque can no more understand each 
other than a New Yorker and a Camanche. It 
is said to be exceedingly difficult ; so much so 
that, according to the popular legend, the Devil, 
who has a special interest in mastering as many 
tongues as possible, spent seven years in the 



Euscaldaiiac, 91 

study of Basque, and learned only three words ; 
but the charitable reader will scarcely regard 
this meagre result as a reflection upon the capa- 
city of the Father of lies, when he shall have at- 
tentively considered the two following sesquipe- 
dalia, which M. Garat cites as specimens of a 
large number : 

Izarysaroyarejilurrearenbarenay which is, be- 
ing interpreted, '' the centre of the mountain 
road." 

Azpilciietagaraycosaroyarenbej'ecolarrea^ or 
'' the lower ground of the high hill of Azpil- 
cueta." Or these names of mountain-peaks : Bor- 
dacahara ; Abaracoucoharia ; Halcalaudy. (i) 
As to pronunciation, it is sufficient to cite the 
Andalusian proverb, that the Basque writes 
*' Solomon " and pronounces it '' Nebuchadnez- 
zar." Nevertheless, this fearful and wonderful 
tongue is not without its sturdy panegyrists, 
one of whom observes that ** it is truly beauti- 
ful, and has the sweetness of the Italian, and 
the manly sonorousness of the Spanish." 

A language containing many such words as 
the specimens given above, could not fail to 



92 In the Shadow of the Pyrenees. 

have a voluminous literature. The Basques de- 
velop the poetic instinct in a high degree. (2) On 
the banks of the streams where the washerwo- 
men gather, at the maize-huskings, in the fields 
where the ploughshare opens the furrow, the 
Coblacariy or born poets, improvise pastorals, 
serenades, and elegies. Their fables, satires, 
and legends, we are told, sparkle with beauties 
and invite comparison with the masterpieces of 
Greek and Roman literature ; while tragedies 
and comedies not unworthy to be named with 
those of Sophocles and Aristophanes are per- 
formed, not in crowded saloons, but in vast 
mountain amphitheatres, before populations 
gathered from the mountain-sides. Of the ro- 
mance " Love and Duty," which M. Augustin 
Chaho, an authority on Basque antiquities, 
published in 1845, he says : " We challenge all 
Europe to point out among popular poems a 
piece which can compare with it." 

H\iQ: fetes patronales, which are occasions for 
the display of poetic talent, are thus described : 

"■ A guard of horsemen opens the procession, 
dressed in white pantaloons, sashes of crimson 



Euscaldanac. 93 

silk, white surtouts, and enormous bear-skin 
caps ornamented with variously colored plumes 
and ribbons. Then comes the music : flutes, 
tambourines, drums, violins. The dancers fol- 
low, in two files, and with rhythmical step. It 
is the dance known as the Mauresque, which is 
reserved for national fetes. Each dancer holds 
in his right hand a rod, garnished with ribands 
and crowned with a bouquet of flowers. Then 
follow the poet and the usher, then a judge and 
two advocates in court costume. A foot-guard 
armed with rifles and acting as escort, closes the 
procession. The judge and advocates ascend a 
platform and seat themselves at three tables. 
The poet takes his position in front and an- 
nounces his subject. Then ensues a dialogue 
between the two advocates in rhythmical prose, 
which runs into a general satire of vices and ab- 
surdities of all sorts, and provokes the frequent 
applause of the audience with its caustic and 
witty sallies." 

The Basques of the interior are mostly shep- 
herds and farmers. Their farming is with a 
view to home consumption. The principal pro- 



94 ^^^ i^^ Shadow of the Pyrenees. 

ducts are maize, the grain of which is converted 
into metchoura, the bread of the country; apple 
trees, the fruit of which serves for cider, pit- 
tara ; and hemp, which, after being stripped 
and spun by the several families, passes to the 
weaver to be converted into linen. 

The husking of the maize recalls the custom 
of New England. The etcheco-yauna, or mas- 
ter of a well-to-do house, announces to his 
neighbors that, on such an evening and the 
evenings following, there will be a husking at 
his house. The guests gather round a great 
heap of maize, the lads on one side and the 
maidens on the other. The husks plucked off 
pass from hand to hand till they reach the fair- 
est damsels. The young people sing the na- 
tional songs, and at least one poet is always pres- 
ent, eager to display his powers. Affectionate 
glances begin to pass to and fro ; there is a gen- 
eral stir; a young man has found a red ear, a 
discovery which entitles him to the privilege of 
kissing all round ; the ice is broken, they chat- 
ter, laugh, and sing, and meanwhile the work 
goes steadily on and the baskets are filled, emp- 



Etiscaldanac. 95 

tied, and refilled. At midnight they separate 
with cries oi Kikissai ! Irrincina ! uttered as 
only Basque throats can shout, to come together 
again the next evening. 

The Basque peasant in gala dress is superb. 
His blue beret droops over his ear ; his bree- 
ches are of dark velvet ; a red scarf surrounds 
his loins ; his vest hangs gracefully upon one 
shoulder, and his pear-tree stick, pointed with 
iron, is slung by a cord to his wrist. 

The Basque is a born huntsman. Birds of 
passage are often detained among the moun- 
tains by bad weather, at which times the rocks 
echo with salvos of musketry. A favorite 
sport is the hunting of the wild pigeon. High 
up in the tallest trees of the forest, huts of 
branches are constructed. These huts, around 
which are arranged decoys which are made to 
flutter whenever a flock of pigeons is signalled, 
accommodate from four to six huntsmen, each 
one stationed in front of a loophole made so as 
to aflbrd an enfilading shot which will kill a 
number of birds at once. At the sound of the 
chief swhistle, there is a simultaneous fire, and 



gS In the Shadow of the Pyrenees. 

great is the carnage. In some quarters great 
nets are stretched among the trees, and the 
birds, scared by the rattles, and by the decoy 
hawks of wood and feathers which are thrown 
at them, quicken their flight and rush helplessly 
into the snares. 

It has been remarked that the amusements 
of this people resemble those of the ancient 
Greeks in their peculiarly national character, in 
the ceremony with which they are celebrated, 
in the importance attached to them, and in 
the fact that they contemplate not only the 
exercise of the physical, but of the intel- 
lectual powers. They alone among the French 
peasants still perform with scenery and music, 
and always with male actors, the national pas- 
torales or shepherd-dramas, the subjects of 
which are taken from the Bible, from legends, 
from Grecian mythology, from the mediaeval 
traditions, and even from the Ottoman annals. (3) 
They are passionately devoted to the dance. 
"A child," says Boileau, ** knows how to 
dance before it can call its father or its nurse. 
The delight begins with life, and ends only with 



• Euscaldanac, 97 

death.'' The music is furnished by the three- 
holed flageolet or chirola, the violin, the tam- 
bourine, and the accordeon or concertina. It is 
full of color and of strong rhythm. The satit 
basque, or mutchicOy is one of the great national 
amusements, to which the young people aban- 
don themselves with an ardor amounting to 
frenzy. After the representation of the pas- 
torals, the honor of dancing the first three mut- 
chicos is put up at auction, and the first is some- 
times knocked down at one hundred and fifty 
or two hundred francs. The dance is thus 
described by M. Joanne, as performed at Biar- 
ritz on the occasion of their annual reunion : 
**From every part of Biarritz is heard the noise 
of instruments, songs, and wild cries. The 
Basques arrive by every road. In an instant 
the whole town is invaded ; in the public 
squares, and wherever the streets widen, groups 
are arranging themselves. The mutchico be- 
gins. The women occupy the centre and sing 
to the monotonous rhythm of the instruments, 
turning meanwhile on their heels. Around them 
the men dance in a ring, improvising the stran- 
7 



98 In the Shadow of the Pyrenees. 

gest steps, at intervals leaping, uttering deafen- 
ing cries, and brandishing, crossing, and strik- 
ing their staves, and then, at a given signal, 
turning, and repeating the performance in the 
opposite direction." 

Even the priests were formerly wont to take 
part in the dance, possibly in imitation of 
King David, and the churches have been 
known to be opened at Christmas for the tam- 
bourine and the dance. The women were 
formerly not allowed to participate ; the cler- 
gy set down their dancing in the list of deadly 
sins, and one of the native poets, with more 
vehemence than gallantry, asserted that a wo- 
man who danced ought to be cudgelled. M. 
Garat says that though the priests no longer 
dance, they have become no more indulgent to- 
ward the women in this particular ; but in 
Guipuzcoa, at least, the damsels have either 
mollified or defied their spiritual fathers, for I 
have often stopped to watch the dancing groups 
in front of the taverns or on the greensward, 
and have never seen one composed only of 
men. 



Euscaldanac, 99 

In religion they are strict Roman Catholics, 
their native independence and impatience of 
control seeming to desert them in spiritual 
things. All that their natural reason cannot 
account for, they impute to God — who is known 
as Jain Goicoa, or the good master on high — 
and still more to the Devil. They have a mul- 
titude of superstitions, sometimes gloomy, al- 
ways naive. Sorceresses and fortune-tellers are 
in high repute. When they build fires at Saint- 
Jean-de-Luz, it is not only to dance, but to 
please the Saint, for whom a seat is provided 
by placing a stone in the midst of a brazier; 
and the more artless do not fail to inspect the 
ashes the next day to see if the Saint may not, 
by some lucky accident or benevolent design, 
have left a hair among them. The sea-going 
Basques claim that there are those of their num- 
ber who possess the gift of second-sight, and 
affirm that such have seen at certain times the 
death-ship, a sort of Flying Dutchman— a sure 
presage of disaster. 

Their physical type is very fine, especially 
on the part of the men. My own observation 



lOO In the Shadow of the Pyrenees, 

does not confirm the current statements as to 
the beauty of the women in general, except as 
respects their hair, which is superb. Both 
men and women have poor teeth. But, on the 
roads, walking beside their oxen, at work in 
the fields, and standing in the streets of the 
country towns, I have often seen men whose 
truly grand faces would adorn an assembly of 
senators ; the head large and round, the fore- 
head full, the nose slightly aquiline, the lower 
jaw massive, the mouth and chin finely cut, 
and the face oval. The complexion is light, 
but usually sunburned, the eyes black, the hair 
and eyebrows brown. They are of medium 
stature, muscular, well-proportioned, and with 
small and well-modelled hands and feet ; their 
bearing is simple, dignified, and reserved, and 
their taciturnity is notorious. 

It has been truthfully observed that, in an- 
cient times, the Basques kept themselves out- 
side of the Roman world ; in the middle age 
they remained outside of feudal society ; while 
to-day they would fain keep out of the modern 
world. The spectacle of this little confederacy, 



Euscaldanac. loi 

sturdily maintaining its isolation for so many 
centuries, is most interesting, and, in some as- 
pects, affecting ; but the very stubbornness and 
the prolonged success of its resistance to all 
attempts to draw it into the current of modern 
life and thought, only enhances the significance 
of its ultimate failure, and furnishes an expres- 
sive commentary upon the futility of a people's 
most determined efforts to hold itself aloof 
from the brotherhood of nations. Contact is 
God's manifest decree. The five Basques at 
Bayonne bridge, helpless against the incoming 
tide, present a truthful prophecy of the destiny 
of the whole race before the advancing and 
mounting wave of modern civilization (4). 



I02 In the Shadow of the Pyrenees, 



CHAPTER IX. 

BY OMNIBUS TO PASAGES. 

"Now let us ride, and herkeneth what I say. 
And with that word we riden forth our way." — Chaucer. 

THE red and yellow omnibus makes the 
trip between Irun and San Sebastian 
two or three times daily, without a serious 
strain upon the horses. There is plenty of 
room to-day on the broad seat above and be- 
hind the driver, and having clambered to our 
places, we are lumbering the next moment up 
the narrow main street of Irun, from which a 
sharp turn to the left brings us at once into the 
open country. One more look, ere we descend 
the hill before us, at that charming panorama 
on the right — Fuenterrabia, and the bright 
waters of the Bidassoa, and blue Biscay be- 
yond ; the bustling frontier railway-station in 
the valley below, and Santa Maria Guadalupe, 
with its slender spire and huge churchyard- 



By Omnibus to Pas ages. 103 

cross, high up on the side of Jaizquibel, which 
stretches his long razor-back ridge, relieved at 
intervals by watch-towers, along the side of our 
route. The. road is superb. The Basques are 
notable road-makprs. I have ridden a whole 
day with scarce any intermission, traversing a 
large part of the province of Guipuzcoa, and 
every inch of the way over a road as firm and 
even as the best Alpine pass, or the finest drive 
in Central Park. The country is most inviting. 
Carefully cultivated slopes rise on every hand, 
and the abundance and variety of the trees — 
chestnut, poplar, oak, ash, fig, hazel, apple — 
presents a striking contrast to many other parts 
of Spain. The saying that a Spaniard hates a 
tree is a slander, abundantly disproved by the 
care with which he fosters such as he can raise 
on the barren plain of Madrid, for example. 
Nature saves the Basque such trouble, and 
muffles his hills and valleys thick with green. 
There are abundant reminders of the Carlist 
war. Every town among these mountains is 
defaced with blackened ruins, and the new, red- 
tiled roofs indicate where enterprise has made 



I04 In the Shadow of the Pyrenees. 

good the ravages of the fire. Our driver, 
whose ample dimensions left no room on the 
** box," was a garrulous old fellow, and travel 
over these roads during the stormy times had 
furnished him with a large stock of reminis- 
cences. Having been commissioned on one 
occasion to carry a large sum of money, it was 
left to his own discretion to go by sea or by 
land, and as he was subject to sea-sickness, 
he preferred to follow his accustomed route. 
He rolled up his money, and some articles be- 
longing to the passengers, in the tarpaulin cov- 
ering of the baggage-caboose, just behind his 
seat, to the great amusement of certain other 
passengers, who ridiculed his caution. But a 
band of Carlists soon threw the laugh on the 
other side. The party was " gone through," 
but the driver brought off his tarpaulin and its 
contents in safety. Jaizquibel, which furnishes 
the valleys with mill-stones, is now shadowing 
our right, and Haya rises on the left. On the 
former, the numerous paths leading up to the 
solitary watch-towers are in plain sight. What 
places they must be on a bleak winter night, 



By Omnibus to Pasages. 105 

with the snow driving, and the wind howling 
round that bare ridge. What furrous fights 
have raged round those square enclosures, rain- 
ing death from their loopholes. I came upon 
one of them one afternoon, on a rocky crag of 
Igueldo, overlooking the village of that name. 
The iron-plated door was fast locked, and was 
absolutely peppered with bullet marks. 

The women pass us, bearing huge bundles of 
ferns which they deposit in heaps for manure. 
The ploughs which one sees are of modern 
construction, so different from those of Anda- 
lusia, where one is constantly reminded of his 
pictorial Bible and his Bible-dictionary ; for 
the plough is still the old oriental plough, little 
better than two sticks. There, too, the water- 
wheel still revolves in the streams, with earthen 
pots tied to the circumference, and the thresher 
is drawn on his drag by the mules, round and 
round in the heap of grain. Here, in Basque- 
land, is the modern plough, but not the modern 
ox-cart. The Basque cart is a rather pictur- 
esque affair, especially as to its wheels, which 
are solid disks made of pieces of inch plank 



io6 In the Shadow of the Pyrenees. 

fitted neatly together. The beautiful Alderney- 
dun cattle — cows and oxen alike being used for 
draught — have their foreheads protected by 
heavy tufts of colored wool ; and the driver 
stands in an easy attitude, leaning on his ox- 
goad, and salutes us with dignity. 

Now the little river Oyarsun comes into view 
as we turn into Renteria. An old friar is 
making himself comfortable under an umbrella 
in an adjoining field, and a group of washerwo- 
men are standing up to their knees in the water, 
and beating the linen against flat stones. Over 
two arched bridges, and the church, with its high 
walls and richly ornamented doorway, appears 
on the left, succeeded by a long range of fac- 
tories, and a street lined with plastered houses 
with their projecting eaves and iron balconies. 
Renteria once acquired some importance by its 
ship-building ; but the Franco-Spanish wars of 
the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were fatal 
to its prosperity, because, being half-way be- 
tween two important points, Fuenterrabia and 
San Sebastian, it had to sustain the depreda- 
tions both of its enemies and of those who 



By Omnibus to Pasages. 107 

should have been its friends. More fatal than 
all, however, has been the gradual filling up, 
with the debris brought down from the moun- 
tains by the heavy rains, of the bed of the 
Oyarsun, the entrance of which into the bay 
of Pasages formerly served as a port. Before 
reaching Renteria, at the distance of about a 
mile, the road passed under the railway through 
a spacious arch ; and close by, where not a sign 
of a stream was visible, there had been discov- 
ered, as the driver told us, remains of boats like 
the clumsy scows which still lie moored near the 
mouth of the river. The wood was black with 
age and moisture, and the iron crumbled like 
paper. He himself remembered how, twenty- 
seven years before, he had seen ships go up 
from Pasages to Renteria, where the Oyarsun is 
now only a creek. To-day, Renteria depends 
mainly upon its manufacture of linen and prints, 
an important branch of industry in Guipuzcoa, 
since, besides the three factories at Renteria, 
there are also works at Andoain, Lasarte, Vil- 
labona, and Zarauz. 

In passing through the streets of this, as of 



io8 In the Shadow of the Pyrenees. 

every other Basque town, the stranger will at 
once be struck with the profusion of escutch- 
eons decorating, not only the public buildings, 
but many of humbler pretensions. Reference 
has already been made to the grant of universal 
nobility conceded by the fueros, in recognition, 
according to Moncaut, of the services and valor 
of the Basques during the wars with the Moors. 
This fact explains a phenomenon which con- 
trasts oddly enough with the other features of a 
Basque village ; for, while these towns all give 
evidence of thrift, they present few if any signs 
of wealth . The coats of arms are of two classes : 
those of the cities or valleys, and those of indi- 
vidual families. The escutcheon of Fuenterra- 
bia, for instance, is quartered, and bears, in the 
first and fourth quarterings, two sirens ; in the 
second, a lion rampant ; and in the third, a ship 
with the tower of Castile below. The arms of 
San Sebastian are a ship under full sail, with the 
device Noblessa y Lealtad gagnada por fideltat. 
The escutcheon of each city or valley forms the 
basis on which each of its families constructs 
its own, varied according to the family history. 



By Omnibus to Pas ages. 109 

The sluggish, narrow stream of the Oyar- 
sun, with ugly black barges moored to the 
bank, is close on our right as we mount a slight 
ascent, on the crest of which the road branches 
to right and left, and opens upon a sort of am- 
phitheatre with a distant background of blue, 
broken peaks. The railway is at our feet. The 
bottom of the amphitheatre is formed by a 
sheet of water which opens to the sea on the left, 
through a narrow passage between two odd lit- 
tle towns close to the water's edge. This is the 
bay of Pasages. On the right, at the end of 
the bay stands Lezo, at the foot of Jaizquibel, 
its few houses clustered about its tall, yellow 
church, which is celebrated in Guipuzcoa as a 
place of pilgrimage, especially on the four- 
teenth of September, the feast of the Exaltation 
of the Cross. The tide is out, and from Lezo 
half-way to the entrance of the harbor, is an 
expanse of mud over which wades a fisherman 
with his hand-net, groping for bait-fish in the 
little pools. Vessels lie at anchor off the towns, 
or are moored to the quay at the foot of the 
embankment on which we stand. A long rope- 



no In the Shadow of the Pyrenees. 

walk stretches along the opposite bank; just 
beneath us is the railroad-station, and not far 
off the lead works of the Capuchinos, where the 
silver-bearing ore from the foot of Haya is 
treated. The mountains behind us, which form 
the valley of Oyarsun, give evidence of having 
been thoroughly ransacked for their metallic 
treasures of iron, lead, silver, and copper ; and 
there are still to be seen the traces of gigantic 
mining operations, which must have employed 
great numbers of workmen for many years. 
Galleries penetrate horizontally into the heart 
of the mountain, and ramify into a labyrinth of 
passages, or terminate suddenly in bottomless 
abysses. In the same region, also, are to be 
found remains of a great Roman road running 
toward Navarre ; and only a few years ago a 
tomb of Roman construction was discovered, 
with an illegible Latin inscription, and contain- 
ing weapons of copper, pottery, and some silver 
coins bearing the ^^%y of Octavius Augustus. 
But our business now is with the living, and not 
with the dead. What of Pasages ? 



Pasages. 1 1 1 



CHAPTER X. 

PASAGES. 

" On one side lay the ocean ; and on one 
Lay a great water." — Tennyson. 

A BRIGHT summer afternoon, and a hard, 
smooth road under foot, made walking 
a luxury. The highway to San Sebastian, 
which we struck at the mouth of the Oyarsun 
after leaving Renteria, followed the western 
shore of the bay of Pasages, and turning off to 
the right, led round the shore of the inner bay, 
a veritable Serbonian bog at that hour, though 
all over its surface the inward-setting currents 
in the little pools and rivulets, heralded the ris- 
ing tide. At the turn of the shaded path where 
the inner bay opened into the main harbor, a 
flight of massive stone steps led down to the 
water, and close by were the remains of an arch 
which, apparently, had formed part of a bridge 
across the entrance to the inner bay. On the 



112 In the Shadow of the Pyrenees. 

landward side of the path rose a high slope, cov- 
ered with trees and vines, and falling back into 
a charming little recess, where the trees, the 
stone wall, and some children playing with an 
ox-cart, formed a pretty picture. Close by the 
shore, a man was fishing for shrimps with a 
yellow net mounted on two sticks, and pushed 
before him through the water. A few steps 
more brought us to the entrance of Saint-Peter, 
the part of the town on the west side of the 
inlet. At the corner was a remarkably fine 
ball-court, entirely enclosed, with tiers of seats 
on each side, and nicely paved, where some 
children were gathered at the entrance, and a 
gray-haired, bare-footed man in a blue blouse 
and cap, and a soldier with blue frock and 
red pants, were playing at pelota. The soldier 
showed himself the more proficient of the 
two. He was playing the game with the glove, 
and the force with which he hurled the ball 
from the end of the wicker scoop, as he skil- 
fully caught it at each rebound, was amazing. 
At the head of the street into which we now 
turned, stands the church of Saint-Peter, its 



Pasages. 113 

cupola surmounted with the symbol of the keys. 
We found the interior interesting, though taw- 
dry and poor to the last degree. A pretentious 
fresco over the high altar adorned the chancel, 
and from the ceiling, in different parts of the 
church, hung models of ships suspended by 
cords. A small organ occupied the elevated 
choir gallery, and the floor was covered with 
chairs, in front of which lay blocks of wood with 
long strings of wax-taper wrapped round them. 
Not far from the altar was a huge basket from 
which issued a white cat, while another and 
younger pussy advanced from nearer the sacred 
precinct. The pulpit, near the entrance-door, 
was wrapped round with a rich piece of crimson 
silk embroidered with gold. 

Leaving the church, we passed on through 
the narrow street, which is cut like a terrace 
in the side of the rocky slope, and from which, 
at intervals, paths run up to dwellings above ; 
while, on the other side, steep passages open to 
the water, revealing unsightly objects, and emit- 
ting *' a very ancient and fish-like smell." The 
balconied houses are neatly painted, and display 



114 ^^ ^^^ Shadow of the Pyrenees, 

the usual armorial decorations ; women and 
children are in the doorways ; here is a neat 
faj'macia / and now the street takes a sharp 
turn to the left into a narrow passage, flanked on 
one side by the living rock, which, to half the 
height of the adjoining houses, reveals the work 
of the waves by the holes eaten out over its sur- 
face. From this passage we emerged upon the 
stone platform overlooking the narrow entrance 
to the harbor, in one corner of which was a 
stone washing-trough where several women were 
busy, among them a fearful hag with a long chin 
and a savage voice. The office of the com- 
mandant of the port opened on the platform ; 
the sea-wall was furnished with embrasures for 
cannon, and a great piece of iron machinery of 
some kind lay half buried in the water at the 
foot of the wall. 

This is a pleasant place to rest, and while we 
sit here we may recall some of the facts about 
this unique little harbor and its two towns. 
The name Pasages^ according to M. Capistou, 
arose from the necessity oi passing by boat from 
one side to the other of the narrow inlet which 



Pasages. 115 

connects the harbor with the ocean. In the fif- 
teenth century, the discovery of America gave 
importance to this harbor, which was then 
known as Puerto Oiarso^ from the valley of 
Oyarsun, of which its territory was a part, and 
from the jurisdiction of which it passed later 
into that of Fuenterrabia. 

In 1767, the town became entirely indepen- 
dent, in recognition of the services of its seamen 
to the French fleet when blockaded by the Eng- 
lish at Rochelle. Its arms were two oars crossed 
under a fleur-de-lis. It was from this port that 
Lafayette embarked for America. The advan- 
tages of the harbor appealed at once to the quick 
eye of Napoleon the First, as did its lamentable 
condition from the deposits of the Oyarsun, 
which accumulated very rapidly, especially in 
the part toward Lezo and Renteria. He rec- 
ommended the construction of a tunnel under 
Jaizquibel, by means of which the waters of the 
Oyarsun might be diverted from the harbor; 
and modern engineers have been able to sug- 
gest no better plan to obviate the necessity of 
constant and laborious dredging. Stimulated 



ii6 In the Shadow of the Pyrenees. 

by the ravages of a fever in 1870, the Spanish 
Government authorized the province of Guipuz- 
coa to undertake operations on a large scale 
for the clearing and improvement of the harbor ; 
and the contract was taken by a company at 
Madrid, which pushed the works with great 
vigor and success until they were interrupted 
by the civil war. 

Our seat on the platform commands a view 
of the narrow passage, across which a strong 
hand could easily throw a stone, flanked on the 
one side by Jaizquibel and on the other by 
Ulia, and faced, at the point where it enters the 
sea, by a mass of rock over which, at inter- 
vals, the tremendous surf breaks in cataracts of 
creamy foam. The passage is between this 
rock and the mainland on the northwestern 
side, over which flames by night the friendly 
pharos on Ulia, and is accessible for vessels 
of the heaviest tonnage. Directly across from 
our platform lies the town of Saint-John, run- 
ning nearly at a right angle to Saint-Peter, and 
resembling it in all essential particulars. A 
very small procession with drum and fife was 



Pasages. 117 

parading the street along the inlet, and a boy 
was letting off small rockets which exploded in 
the air with a sharp crack ; a demonstration 
which portended, as we were told, a holiday on 
the morrow — Saint James's day — and a bull-fight 
of such proportions as could be compassed in 
the narrow street and with the narrower resour- 
ces of the Pasagians. 

Boats were in waiting at the foot of the plat- 
form, in one of which we were ferried across to 
Saint-John by two women, who handled the 
huge, clumsy oars with a muscular ease and 
dexterity which explained why Philip the Fourth, 
in 1660, took a number of these vigorous oars- 
women to Madrid to row the pleasure boats in 
the Retiro. We were landed at the foot of a 
flight of stone steps where some naked gamins 
were disporting themselves in the water, one of 
them evidently chilly and with his face drawn up 
in the most comical fashion. At the top of the 
steps we were met by a poor little cripple with his 
crutch, in blue garments and red cap, and with 
a pretty, childlike face, who eagerly proffered 
his services as guide. Saint-John is less cleanly 



1 1 8 In the Shadow of the Pyrenees, 

than Saint-Peter, and like it, is built at the foot 
of a steep height, on a narrow street, with side 
passages leading down to the water and emit- 
ting evil smells. The street runs under arch- 
ways at intervals ; some of the houses are in 
ruins ; on one were the remains of a once beau- 
tiful entrance between columns now worn with 
age, and displaying a shield the bearings of 
which were mostly effaced ; the only well-de- 
fined figure being that of some rampant beast 
with a miraculous tail. From the side of the 
street a series of steep stairs mounted to the 
church of Santa-Anna, high up on the moun- 
tain-side, and near the end of the town rose 
the church of Saint-John, to which we were 
admitted by a woman whom our bright little 
guide summoned from an adjoining house, and 
who bore a formidable bunch of keys. The 
principal object within was the huge retablo 
with its profusion of gilding. Here and there 
were displayed hideous images, one in a chapel 
to the right of the entrance — a crucifixion, 
most horrible to behold. The choir contained 
a somewhat pretentious organ, but our attend- 



Pasages. 119 

ant said it was useless, and that some two 
thousand dollars would be required to put it in 
repair, a consummation which was apparently 
quite remote, since she informed us that the in- 
dustries of the place had so declined that some 
Americans (meaning South Americans) would 
be necessary to restore prosperity to Saint- 
John. One of the chapels, on the left of the 
high altar, was made of a dark wood elabor- 
ately carved, and was said to be a thank-offer- 
ing from a trader or captain, who brought the 
wood from *' foreign parts," had it worked up, 
and presented it to the church in acknowledg- 
ment of a prosperous voyage. On the left side 
of the church, about half-way from the entrance, 
was a shrine, consisting of a glass case contain- 
ing a reclining female figure of wax, dressed in 
rich satin. The face and figure were less repul- 
sive than usual, and underneath was a piece of 
plaster with the inscription Faustine in Pace, 
Kal. Oct. , and with the palm branch scratched 
below. The letters had been colored red, and 
the fragment was apparently a genuine one 
from a Christian tomb in the Catacombs at 



1 20 In the Shadow of the Pyrenees, 

Rome. The altar to the right of the tribune 
resembled Castile soap. 

From the church we strolled into the porce- 
lain factory, sniffed unwillingly the odor of hot 
oil from the sardine-packing establishment, and 
returned to our landing place, where we 
amused ourselves by throwing coppers for the 
naked urchins to dive after. One of them was 
clamorous, insisting that the coin should be 
wrapped in paper ; and vented his rage at re- 
fusal by throwing water at his confrere in the 
bath, and thereby plentifully besprinkling us. 
The stout damsels ferried us back to Saint-Peter 
and tried to get a little extra fare out of us ; 
and retracing our steps amid the *' well-defined 
and separate " stenches, two and seventy, more 
or less, which a member of the party, in view 
of the numerous coats of arms, suggested might 
be the odors of decaying nobility, we repassed 
the ball court, where the soldier was still at 
play, but without his coat, and took the road 
to San Sebastian. 



San Sebastian. 121 



CHAPTER XL 

SAN SEBASTIAN. 

*' he passed the sea. 
And reached a river opening into it. 
Across the which the white -winged fowl did flit 
From cUfF to chff, and on the sandy bar 
The fresh waves and the salt waves were at war, 
At turning of the tide." — WiLU am Morris : Jason. 

THE road from Pasages is lined for some 
distance with red, ferruginous rocks. The 
excellence of their arms which rendered the 
Basques so formidable to the Roman armies, 
was due in great part to the abundance of 
metals afforded by their mountains. I have 
already spoken of the mines of Oyarsun ; and 
this whole region abounds in haematite ore of 
the best quality. One of the most important 
industries of the Basque provinces is furnished 
by the iron mines of Bilbao, about eleven miles 
from that city, in which fifteen millions of dol- 
lars of foreign capital are invested. During 
1 88 1, over two and a half millions of tons of 



122 In the Shadow of the Pyrenees, 

iron ore were exported ; and the mining popu- 
lation, largely composed of mountaineers from 
Navarre and from the three Spanish-Basque 
provinces, is not less than thirteen thousand. 

The road begins to descend. A fortress 
crowning a headland, and a high tower beyond, 
come into view. Then in the valley beneath, a 
fine railway station and a plaza de toros ; cul- 
tivated terraces, sprinkled with houses and gar- 
dens, rise from a beautiful semicircular bay; 
there is the silver line of a little river ; a flash of 
white breakers flinging their spray at the cas- 
tellated headland ; a fine bridge spanning the 
river ; and a compact, handsome town, crowd- 
ed thickly under the landward side of the cita- 
del and stretching round the semicircle of the 
bay. This is the capital of Guipuzcoa, San 
Sebastian, or, as the Basques call it, Donos- 
tiya. 

The traveller who shall consult Mr. O'Shea's 
** Guide to Spain," will read as follows : '* Irun, 
San Sebastian, etc., are nothing but Basque 
towns, devoid of interest." Such manuals as 
Mr. O'Shea's (and his is truly valuable) are 



San Sebastian. 123 

largely used by a class of tourists whose ideal 
of travel is to visit as many great cities, and to 
see as many churches, picture-galleries, and 
palaces as possible. That class cannot do bet- 
ter than accept the above oracular statement, 
and fly on the wingS' of steam past San Sebas- 
tian, to Pamplona, Zaragoza, Burgos, and Ma- 
drid. But to one who loves to surrender him- 
self leisurely, day after day, to the charm of 
nature ; to one who loves to study the life and 
characteristics of a strongly-marked and noble 
race ; to one who is in search of a quiet nook 
where the summer may melt away in a deli- 
cious climate, tempered by the salt breezes of 
Biscay and the bracing air of the Basses-Pyre- 
nees ; to one who desires a centre for a circle of 
charming excursions, within easy reach of some 
of the old historic cities of Spain, and of an end- 
less variety of drives and walks through one of 
the finest mountain countries of the world, — 
San Sebastian will present peculiar attractions. 
If cities, like men, are perfected through suf- 
fering, San Sebastian has enjoyed unusual facil- 
ities for attaining perfection. It has been swept 



124 ^^ ^^^ Shadow of the Pyrenees. 

by five great fires, and was wasted by a pestil- 
ence in 1597 ; its marine was nearly destroyed 
by the English in 1780 ; it has suffered succes- 
sive invasions by the French ; was besieged and 
taken by the Duke of Berwick in 1719 ; was 
destroyed and sacked with the most infernal 
cruelty by the English and Portuguese in 1813 ; 
was bombarded during the Carlist wars ; besides 
being the scene of numerous bloody struggles 
between the Carlists and Isabellists. That it 
has survived at all, to say nothing of its pres- 
ent thrift and beauty, speaks volumes for the 
courage and energy of its people. 

It was anciently known as Hizurmn or Irur- 
uniy a Basque name meaning three entrances ^ 
doubtless in allusion to the two passages from 
the ocean into the Concha bay, and the en- 
trance at the mouth of the Urumea. This name 
it retained up to the tenth century. It is also 
referred to by Roman authors under the name 
of Easo. As to the present Basque name, Do- 
nostiya^ its etymology is unknown. In the 
twelfth century, the jurisdiction of San Sebas- 
tian extended from Fuenterrabia to the river 




SAN SEBASTIAN. 



San Sebastian. 125 

Oria, and from Pasages to Navarre. Charles 
the Fifth conferred on it the title of Noble and 
Loyaly and it was raised to the rank of a city 
somewhere about the time of the Franco-Span- 
ish alliance and the marriage of Louis the Four- 
teenth and Maria Theresa. During the last 
civil war, it was one of the principal bases of 
operations for the national army, and suffered 
greatly in its commerce and industries by the 
blockade of the Carlist guerillas. 

A reference to the accompanying plan will 
give the reader a general idea of the situation 
and prominent features of the city. It was 
originally confined to the isthmus, and included 
in the enceinte of Urgullo, which projects into 
the ocean, and is crowned with the castle of 
La Mota, built in the fifteenth century. In 
1863, the wall of the enceinte which crossed the 
isthmus was demolished, and a wide boulevard, 
called the Alameda, was constructed from bay 
to bay : a pleasant, shaded street, lined with 
shops and handsome cafes, and where the fine 
band of the garrison dispenses excellent music 
on summer evenings. Since the opening of this 



126 In the Shadow of the Pyrenees. 

boulevard, the town has gradually spread over 
the entire isthmus, round the Concha, to the 
little suburb of Antigua, up the height of San 
Bartolomeo, and across the Urumea along the 
road to Pasages. The railway station is far- 
ther up the Urumea, and behind it is the Plaza 
de Toros, a flimsy-looking circular structure of 
wood, mounted upon a brick basement, and 
said to accommodate ten thousand spectators. 
Standing on the handsome stone bridge of Santa 
Catalina and facing seaward, the eye runs down 
the Zurriola, or estuary of the Urumea, where 
its narrow stream, flanked by shoals, passes out 
into the sea between Monte Ulia and Monte 
Urgullo, its entrance being marked by a white 
line of frightful breakers. At the time of my 
visit, the works for the filling up of the Zurriola 
were in active progress, and the shoals on each 
side of the river-channel were already covered 
with masses of masonry ; but the heavy gales 
of September, 1882, destroyed all that had been 
done. The force of the breakers often makes 
itself felt as far up as the bridge ; and I have 
seen a lounger on the parapet thoroughly 



San Sebastian. 127 

drenched by the expiring leap of one of those 
watery Anakims of Biscay. Down the Zurri- 
ola, from the bridge to Urgullo, runs a wide, 
shaded promenade, terminating at the pubUc 
market, and named Oquendo, after a famous 
admiral. 

It is, however, the view to the left of the isth- 
mus which possesses the greatest charm. Be- 
ginning at Urgullo, the line of the superb bay 
of the Concha sweeps round in a perfect semi- 
circle to the headland of Chubillo, which is 
crowned with a massive stone tower, and forms 
the end of Monte Igueldo. Between these two 
headlands lies the little island of Santa Clara, 
with its lighthouse, and to the right of this, 
snugly sheltered under the shoulder of Urgullo, . 
are the trim stone docks. Along the curve of 
yellow sand stretching from headland to head- 
land, breaks the surf, its first fury tempered by 
its contact with Santa Clara and the rocks at the 
entrance. Above, the town follows the line of 
the bay along a fine avenue known as the Paseo 
de la Concha, rising still higher in detached 
villas along the slope of San Bartolomeo, and 



128 In the Shadow of the Pyrenees. 

merging, about two-thirds of the way round the 
semicircle, into the suburb of Antigua. 

It would be hard to find, or even to fancy^ 
a finer combination of mountain and sea, town 
and garden, than is presented by San Sebas- 
tian. Our summer home was about the centre 
of the arc of the Concha ; a spacious brick 
house, with airy rooms and hard-wood floors ; 
its front facing the Paseo de la Concha, and its 
rear piazza resting on a sea-wall some thirty 
feet in height, and directly over the broad", 
smooth bathing-beach. Will the coming days 
ever give back the dolce far 7iieitte of those 
hours on that balcony ; the ineffable charm and 
daily freshness of that exquisite scene which 
melted insensibly into memory, while the pleas- 
ant chat went round, and the light wind bore 
the fragrant cigar-clouds to mingle with the salt 
odors of Biscay ? The sun seems to enter upon 
a happier sky when he touches the Pyrenees. 
Such clarity of light ! Such sweet, tremulous 
blue in the heavens ! Such deep sapphire along 
the horizon-line of the sea! Such translu- 
cent green of the billows, rallying from their 



San Sebastian, 129 

first shock against UrguUo and Santa Clara, 
poised in curves of emerald for an instant ere 
they drop upon the sand, then climbing the 
sea-wall, and, as they recede, encountering the 
on-coming breaker in tossing whirls of foam 
and spray ! Such undulations of purple, rolling 
silently landward when the wind goes down 
at sunset, and Chubillo stands out against the 
flames of the rosy west, and the light begins to 
twinkle on Santa Clara ! 

Down on the beach, nearer the town, cluster 
the pavilions of La Perla del Oceano, the great 
sea-bathing estabHshment. The beautiful dun 
cattle slowly draw the gayly painted bathing 
machines into the surf; boats hover on the 
safety-line, which is marked by a row of flags, 
and mount guard over the host of bathers ; while 
a remarkable barge, a combination of the Ro- 
man galley and the Chinese junk, gay with float- 
ing streamers, and furnished with trapezes and 
diving platforms, presents attractions for more 
adventurous swimmers. The Madrilenes are here 
in troops. The stout bathing- women, perennially 
moist, escort timid spinsters and elderly dames 



130 In the Shadow of the Pyrenees. 

into the outskirts of the breakers. Portly fathers 
lead in prancing boys and girls, who fill the air 
with their shrill cries of delight ; while young men 
in closely fitting and unspeakable bathing cos- 
tumes, display their amphibious qualities on the 
platforms of the barge. Morning, noon, and 
evening, the white lines of foam are dotted 
thickly with black heads, reminding one of a 
preserve of seals or of sea-lions. Now a regi- 
ment of soldiers comes trooping down to the 
beach and plunging into the surf, each man 
crossing himself as his feet touch the water; 
or some small boys, who know well that they 
are on forbidden ground, surreptitiously strip 
under the shadow of the balcony, and scamper, 
like frightened snipe, to hide themselves in the 
water. The panting little propeller plies, all 
day long, between Santa Clara and the docks ; 
the white breakers leap round the rocks of 
Urgullo and Chubillo ; now a steamer works 
slowly out of the docks, and moving cautiously 
out between Urgullo and Santa Clara, heads for 
Santander, or Bilbao, or Bayonne, or an inward 
bound one stands off and on until the tide may 



San Sebastian. 131 

serve ; the fishing-boats, by twos and threes, 
creep round the headland and anchor in the 
open sea, now borne on high, and now buried 
in the mighty swell. Now there is a sudden 
rush along the beach, and the crowd gathers on 
the terrace above. Longinus, the majordomo 
of our little establishment, blacker than ink, 
seems to have taken on a more funereal shade 
as he solemnly announces that a man is drowned. 
All eyes are fastened on a little group, in the 
midst of which the glass reveals the ghastly 
form of an elderly, beastly-looking man, over 
whose naked body doctors and bathing-men 
are busy trying to rekindle the vital spark. 
They rub, they twist his limbs, they breathe 
into his nostrils ; now and then a trained ear is 
laid against the cold breast, and a practised fin- 
ger feels for the pulse-beat. All in vain ; the 
spirit is away, and nothing remains but that un- 
sightly clod. Cover it with a blanket 'd.xid. finis . 
Under their little awning on the Paseo sit the 
carabineros, and doze and smoke, flashing out 
into momentary vigilance as a country cart 
comes by, or a woman with a basket on her 



132 In the Shadow of the Pyrenees. 

head. They stir up the straw in the cart, or 
examine the bales and boxes, or thrust a sun- 
burnt hand into the basket, and go back to the 
shadow of their awning again. Half-way down 
the grassy slope to the beach, each morning, 
with the regularity of clock-work, an old half- 
imbecile plants himself, leading a sheep by a 
cord, and sits there with his woolly companion 
the livelong day, thinking and doing heaven 
only knows what. The poor sheep, at least, 
does not find fat pasturage. Near the gate, in 
the shadow of the trees, stands or sits each day, 
with equal perseverance, a beggar with some 
hideous disease or mutilation of the lips, but 
dignified as a cavalier in his appeal for alms. 
Priests with their black cassocks and broad- 
brimmed fur hats, pass to and fro between the 
town and the little religious establishment at 
Antigua ; now the tinkling of a bell is heard, 
and another priest in full canonicals, preceded 
by crosier and censer, goes his way to the 
chamber of the dying. There is a rattle of 
wheels, and a succession of vigorous shouts, as 
the striped omnibus for Zarauz comes by, laden 



,San Sebastian. 133 

with baggage and crammed with passengers 
within and without ; for there is a rise in the 
road just here, where the driver invariably lays 
on the whip and breaks, into vociferation. 
Here come the soldiers, a thousand or so, in 
their red pants and white alpargatas or sandals, 
their officers in black, gold-laced coats with 
wide sleeves, and preceded by the superb band 
of sixty or seventy pieces. They are on their 
way to the parade-ground at Antigua, close by 
the water's edge, for their afternoon drill, 
whence they will come back in loose order 
toward sunset, • laughing, chatting, singing, 
whooping, and pausing to crack jokes upon 
black Longinus, who is a curiosity in these 
parts, and who stands at the gate arrayed for 
his ministrations at the dinner-table. 

The sunlight fades ; the city glows with gas 
and electric light ; the bathing-barge quits its 
moorings and is towed to the docks ; the little 
steamer makes its final trip across the bay, glid- 
ing under the deep shadows of the headlands 
like a ghostly shallop ; the light streams full and 
clear from Santa Clara ; Chubillo's tower looms 



134 ^^ i^^ Shadow of the Pyrenees. 

up in the gathering gloom — a gigantic phantom ; 
the bugle-call rings down from La Mota ; 

' ' the slow moon climbs, the deep 
Moans round with many voices." 

Biscay heaves darkly under the stars, and then 
breaks into gold beneath the rising moon, and all 
is still save the ceaseless thunder of the surf, as 

" The plunging seas draw backward from the land 
Their moon-led waters white." 

The town itself is handsome, compactly built 
of a yellowish stone. The older portion, between 
the Alameda and the citadel, is threaded by 
narrow streets, and contains, besides the older, 
sixteenth century church of San Vicente, the 
principal church of the city, Santa Maria, fin- 
ished in 1764. Spite of Cenac Moncaut's em- 
phatic statement that it is the most irreproach- 
able monument of the Renaissance, it is a 
monument of a corrupt taste. As M. Capistou 
justly observes, it bears the mark of the unset- 
tled and troublous period of its erection, being a 
mixture of all orders and belonging to none. Its 
rococo fa9ade is pierced by a central portal 
adorned with statues in niches, and with a host 



San Sebastian. 135 

of florid embellishments, above which stands 
Saint Sebastian, plentifully skewered with darts. 
Within, its size and architectural lines give it 
a degree of dignity, notwithstanding its gaudy 
ornamentation. The choir, which, as usual, is 
a gallery over the end opposite to the huge high- 
altar, contains some richly carved stalls, and 
several of the side- altars are costly and elabo- 
rately sculptured. 

Behind the church, a long flight of stone steps 
leads up to a little, tawdry chapel, connected 
with the convent of Santa Teresa, the grated 
windows of which command the staircase. Its 
most notable feature is the iron grating enclosing 
the choir gallery, which opens into the convent ; 
a barrier so tremendous as to suggest a prison 
for the most dangerous brigands or contraband- 
ists, instead of a retreat for innocent nuns. 

From the foot of the staircase it is but a mo- 
ment's walk to the docks, small, but well and 
handsomely built, where a few coasters, a 
steamer or two, and an occasional vessel from 
South America or the Antilles, furnish a feeble 
reminder of the fleets which so effectively aid- 



136 In the Shadow of the Pyrenees. 

ed Spain in her wars with Holland, England, 
and France. Most of the marine trade of 
the Basque provinces now centres at Pasages. 
A steamer for Bayonne has steam up, and a 
little crowd is gathered about the gangway. 
There is a cry and a sudden rush toward one 
of the inner docks, and a pair of stout shoes de- 
scribes a semicircle in the air, as a Basque 'long- 
shoreman turns a somersault over a pile of bales. 
In a moment the cause of the disturbance is fished 
out of the water in the shape of a small and par- 
ticularly wet boy, who is landed and led away, 
very much scared, but otherwise safe and sound. 

Before leaving this section, it is worth while 
to climb to the Priest's Walk, a shady terrace 
on the landward side of Urgullo, furnished with 
seats, and displaying some attempts at orna- 
mental gardening. It is a cool and pleasant 
place, and commands an excellent view of the 
Concha and of the docks. 

Down the narrow street, toward the Zurriola. 
What are those dark-colored, odd-looking ob- 
jects on the sidewalk, like huge bladders tied at 
the four corners ? When you drink your Valde- 



San Sebastian, 137 

penas, my friend, you will find out, through a 
flavor in the cup which is not of the grape, but 
of the hog-skin in which your beverage has come 
to market. Possibly the hint of the swine con- 
veyed in every taste of that somewhat potent 
fluid, may act as a check upon prodigal ten- 
dencies. Here is the Plaza de la Constitucion. 
A droll and knowing old fellow, while escort- 
ing me, some weeks ago, through the crooked 
streets of Toledo, dryly observed that every 
Spanish town contained a Plaza de la Constitu- 
cion and a Plaza de Toros ; a remark which was 
not so much of a joke as it seemed, though the 
rationale of the association of bulls and consti- 
tutional government might not be at once appa- 
rent. Be that as it may, the remark itself finds 
an illustration in San Sebastian. The Plaza de la 
Constitucion is a square, enclosed by yellow 
houses built over arcades, and commanded at 
the western end by the Casa Consistorial , with 
its granite base and doric front. What is within 
I do not know from personal observation, but, 
according to M. Capistou, the council-hall is 
adorned with four statues, representing Wis- 



138 In the Shadow of the Pyrenees, 

dom, Commerce, Prudence, and Justice, to- 
gether with sundry objets d'art, including two 
large vases of Sevres porcelain, presented to the 
city in 1858 by Louis Napoleon and Eugenie. 
Now, the Zurriola and the bar with its breakers, 
and the broad walks and shade-trees of Oquendo, 
and the market, where the stout huckstresses sit 
in rows, each with her goods in a basket at her 
feet and a basket of fruit, or vegetables, or a 
pair of chickens in her lap. For the chicken, 
like the fish, is an important factor of the Span- 
ish cuisine. No cooks in the world know how 
to prepare eggs in so many and such appetizing 
forms. As for the chicken itself, there is literally 
no part of it, except the beak and the feathers, 
which does not appear at table in some form or 
other. The interior arrangements of the fowl 
are displayed in heaps on the marble slabs of 
the market ; and I was reminded of a worthy 
dame in a little New England town, where the 
luxury of sweetbreads was unappreciated, and 
who, with a most delicious horror, asked, when 
she heard me inquiring for them of the butch- 
er, ** Do you eat them entrails f^ 



San Sebastian, 139 

A visit to the castle will pleasantly occupy 
an afternoon. The ascent begins on the side 
toward the town, by a broad^ shaded road, 
which winds round the headland and reaches 
the castle on the seaward side. This seaward 
slope is sprinkled with white tombstones, mark- 
ing the graves of English officers and soldiers 
killed in the memorable siege of 1813, and also 
in defending San Sebastian against the Carlists 
in 1836. At one point of the footpath above 
the carriage-road, just behind an empty stone 
socket which has evidently once upheld a cross, 
is an inscription to the memory of him who 
made this via crticis, and near by is a notice. 
It is forbidden to take the short cut. True 
indeed. The way of the cross allows no short 
cut. The fortifications are interesting only to 
a military antiquarian, and would stand no 
chance against the terrible enginery of modern 
warfare. The view, it need hardly be said, is 
exquisite. The superb panorama of the city, 
the Concha, and the encircling hills, opens on 
the landward side, while, on the other, the eye 
ranges out over the limitless expanse of Biscay, 



140 In the Shadow of the Pyrenees, 

down the indented coast-line to where France 
looms up through the soft haze, and past the 
lighthouse of Igueldo, along the ocean-front 
of Guipuzcoa, to the distant, heavy mountain- 
masses of Vizcaya. 

Returning through the Alameda and the ad- 
joining streets, we shall find little to detain us 
in the shops, unless it be the beautiful work in 
iron, inlaid with elaborate patterns in gold and 
silver, an art for which Toledo is especially 
famous, and which is employed in the manufac- 
ture of brooches, match-boxes, and many other 
pretty knicknacks. 

To-night there is great popping of muskets 
and cracking of rockets. There is to be not 
only a bull-fight, but a series of bull-fights, one 
on Sunday, of course ; but as there is but one 
Sunday in the week, the remainder must needs 
fall on week-days. The walls are garnished 
with gay placards. Three representative mata- 
dors are to appear, among them Frascuelo, the 
veteran hero of the Madrid ring. Frascuelo is 
really coming ! Frascuelo is here ! Alphonso 
himself would not be greeted with more en- 



San Sebastian, 141 

thusiasm. Riding on horseback through the 
streets, dressed in close-fitting velvet jacket and 
breeches, the blue silk scarf round his waist, 
the little pigtail escaping from beneath his vel- 
vet hat, his dress glittering with trinkets — his 
progress is an ovation. San Sebastian is in a 
tumult of delighted expectancy ; the Alameda 
is well nigh impassable. Special trains are run- 
ning from all the neighboring towns ; the win- 
dow of the ticket-office is ablaze with the gilt 
paper wrapped round the sharp banderillaSy or 
little darts, which are used to exasperate the 
bull. The horses which are to take part in the 
exhibition, sorry hacks, display on their flanks 
ghastly scars which are an ominous prophecy 
of the fate in store for them. In Spain alone 
the old Roman amphitheatre survives. Did I 
go ? No, reader ; I have no love for brutal ex- 
hibitions, and like J , my Spanish friend, my 

sympathies are all with the bull. If you are 
curious as to the details of the performance, 
read Edmondo De Amicis' Spain and the Span- 
iards; only make a little allowance for his ex- 
uberant fancy. 



142 In the Shadow of the Pyrenees, 



CHAPTER XII. 

THE HILL-COUNTRY. 

"the clouds, 
The mist, the shadows, light of golden suns, 
Motions of moonlight, all come thither — touch, 
And have an answer — thither come, and shape 
A language not unwelcome to sick hearts 
And idle spirits : — there the sun himself. 
At the calm close of summer's longest day, 
Rests his substantial orb ; between those heights 
And on the top of either pinnacle. 
More keenly than elsewhere in night's blue vault. 
Sparkle the stars, as of their station proud. 
Thoughts are not busier in the mind of man 
Than the mute agents stirring there." — ^Wordsworth. 

THE streets of San Sebastian are enlivened 
with touches of briUiant scarlet — the color 
of the closely fitting boynas or Basque caps of 
the hackmen, who swarm about the Alameda 
and up and down the Concha, perched on their 
neat basket-phaetons, and driving the little, 
hardy Basque horse, which Silius Italicus, a 
Roman poetaster of the first century, described 
as 

" Parvus sonipes, nee Marti notus," 



The Hill- Country, 143 

or, translating freely, '* a pony, and not a war- 
horse." The labors of these little fellows are 
mitigated by the splendid roads which thread 
Guipuzcoa in every direction, among the quaint, 
picturesque towns of the beautiful hill-country. 
One of our first drives will be to Hernani, about 
four miles from San Sebastian, a town of some 
thirty-five hundred inhabitants, over which rises 
the mountain crest of Burunza Mendi, crowned 
by the bastions of the fortress of Santa Barbara. 
The greater part of these houses which line its 
narrow main street belong to the sixteenth cen- 
tury. What a display of sculptured facades ! 
What a zoological garden of heraldic beasts — 
oxen, rams, hogs — rearing or couching on its 
stone escutcheons amid porridge-pots and caul- 
drons depending from trees ! Above the plas- 
tered houses rises the huge church, with its 
domed tower, its ornate front, and its high, 
bare walls. Its retablo is imposing ; and the 
sacristy contains an Ecce Homo, the back turned 
to the spectator, exhibiting a horrid realism in 
the bleeding flesh and livid, swollen scourge- 
weals. An archway leads through a mass of 



144 ^^ ^^^ Shadow of the Pyrenees, 

masonry which crosses the street and abuts 
upon the church — all that remains of the Casa 
Consistorial, which was destroyed in 1875 by 
an explosion of the ammunition stored within. 
The town suffered two bombardments during 
the Carlist war, of which its houses bear ghastly 
traces. Now, emerging from the narrow street, 
and following for some distance the stone wall 
of an extensive villa, we are stopped, not by 
a Carlist brigand, but by the officer of the 
road, who demands our driver's ** permit." The 
owner of a carriage pays some six or seven dol- 
lars for the use of the roads during the summer, 
and thus a part of the revenue is furnished for 
the construction and repair of the highways. 
Here, on the grass by the shaded road, is a 
band of gypsies kindling their evening fire. 

" Imps, in the barn with mousing owlet bred, 
From rifled roost at nightly revel fed." 

On the evening air is borne the sound of the 
flageolet ; a turn in the road reveals a group of 
merry dancers, a score of girls and perhaps half 
a dozen men and boys. The dance, in triple 



The Hill- Country. 145 

rhythm, is spirited but thoroughly modest, com- 
plicated to a stranger's eye, the figure appa- 
rently resolving itself into groups of four, and 
the dancers, with raised arms, marking the beat 
by snapping their fingers. With what solemn 
assiduity that tall, elderly fellow addresses him- 
self to the work ! With what conscientiousness 
he frisks and snaps and balances, bending grave 
looks from his superior height upon the circling 
damsels ! 

Another day we turn off from Renteria, and 
mount through the chestnut-woods to Oyarsun, 
with its church of Saint- Stephen, its blackened 
ruins, its iron balconies and carved gables. It 
is the most ruinous-looking town I have seen in 
the province, and bears sad traces of its occupa- 
tion by the Liberals and the Carlists alternately 
during the civil war of 1833-40. The strong 
fortress of Saint-Mark is in full view on a neigh- 
boring height ; we pass manufactories of terra- 
cotta and tiles, and flouring-mills turned by the 
stream which threads the valley. Or we go 
through Lasarte, with its spinning works, and 

along the valley of the Oria past Usurbil, with 
10 



146 In the Shadow of the Pyrenees, 

its fine church of San Salvador, and Aguinaga 
in its lovely amphitheatre of hills, and the for- 
est of Irisasi, belonging to the ancient monas- 
tery of Roncesvalles ; or through Orio, home 
of fishermen, and Andoain, with its church of 
granite and jasper, and its cotton-factories and 
print-works. 

One July morning, J and myself started 

for a walk to Igueldo, the little town bearing the 
name of the height which forms the left horn of 
the Concha. The whole range, which consists 
of three elevations, is commonly known as Ig- 
ueldo ; but strictly the name belongs to only 
one of the three; the headland which terminates 
the range on the seaward side, and which is 
lower than the others, being properly known as 
Chubillo. The tower on Chubillo, perhaps the 
most prominent object in the scene, has appar- 
ently formed a part of a larger building now de- 
stroyed. It is a massive, cylindrical, stone struc- 
ture, to the best of my recollection about fifty 
or sixty feet in height, and mounted upon a 
square platform, to which one must scramble up 
as best he can, at the risk of a bruised finger or 



The Hill- Country. 147 

a lamed foot from a loose stone. A good, and 
not difficult footpath, leads up from the beach 
to the foot of the tower in a leisurely walk of 
twenty minutes, which is more than repaid by 
the beautiful view from the summit. On the 
slope facing the sea, a little below the tower, 
stands a lighthouse of much greater size and 
power than the one on Santa Clara, the outer 
side of which island is visible from this point, 
presenting to the sea a smooth, perpendicular 
wall like a series of great flagstones set on end. 
Our route to Igueldo, however, led us to the 
left of Chubillo, and struck at last into the new 
road now in process of construction from San 
Sebastian to the hamlet of Igueldo, and beyond, 
to the bay of Guetaria ; often lying directly 
through masses of the yellow sandstone which 
furnishes such fine building- and mill-stones. 
Rising on the landward slopes of the mountain, 
the road worked upward and outward toward 
the sea, until, at the end of a hard climb, the 
freshening breeze was followed by the view of 
the ocean and of the coast tow*ard Vizcaya ; 
and after scaling sundry stone walls, and tra- 



148 In the Shadow of the Pyrenees, 

versing one or two fields, we fell into a little 
caravan of donkeys and women, the latter with 
baskets on their heads and displaying a variety 
of colors — pink, red, brown, blue — in their cos- 
tume. A few miserable houses announced the 
entrance to Igueldo. The people of whom we 
made inquiries were either indisposed to an- 
swer, or, what is more likely, understood noth- 
ing but Basque. The village stands on the 
brow of a height, looking westward down the 
splendid coast to the mountains of Vizcaya. It 
was a miserable little place, though its street 
commissioners were evidently enthusiasts, if not 
extravagant, since the sidewalks were of supe- 
rior quality. The prominent object was a low, 
whitewashed church, with an entrance under a 
long portico, the roof of which was supported 
by rude, half-hewn timbers, while the rough 
tiles which covered it, as well as the entire 
church-roof, were loaded down with large 
stones, like the roofs of the Swiss chalets, 
for protection against the wind. The square 
church-tower, of yellow sandstone, was evi- 
dently more recent than the rest of the build- 



The Hill- Country, 149 

ing, and the church was lighted by small lat- 
ticed windows over the portico. Close by, the 
road-making was in active progress ; the oxen 
with their shaggy, blue woollen frontlets, heav- 
ily dragging the solid-wheeled carts, and dump- 
ing loads of the yellow soil upon a huge em- 
bankment. Climbing over a stone wall, and 
pushing our way through the prickly shrubs 
which covered the ground, we mounted the 
height overlooking the village, where we found 
one of the little stone forts so common every- 
where throughout these mountains ; a simple 
square enclosure some thirty feet in height, 
pierced with loopholes, and with a single door, 
sheathed with iron and battered with bullet- 
marks. Following the ridge back toward San 
Sebastian, we encountered a large stone cross 
planted in the solid rock, from which a magnifi- 
cent panorama unrolled itself at our feet. On 
our left, Biscay stretched away to the horizon ; 
behind was the coast of Guipuzcoa, the heights 
encircling Guetaria, and beyond, the heavy, 
cloud-capped masses of Vizcaya, while on the 
right lay a heaving sea of green hills and a net- 



J 50 In the Shadow of the Pyrenees. 

work of roads and valleys, rising gradually to 
the slopes of the lower Pyrenees. It would 
seem to have been general washing-day through- 
out the province, since the landscape at every 
point, on the hillsides and over the greenswards 
of the valleys, was flecked with patches of snowy 
linen. Descending through a tangle of bushes 
and prickly plants, and crossing a little valley, 
another summit lay before us, about equal 
in height with the one we had just left ; and 
mounting this, we found ourselves under the 
walls of a quite elaborate fort, surrounded with 
a deep and wide ditch, over which a wooden 
bridge led to the entrance. A swarthy soldier 
in rags opened the door. The interior gave un- 
mistakable evidences of domestic life no less 
than of military occupation, in a row of poor 
dwellings and a group of unkempt children. 
No munitions of war were visible, but the fort 
was furnished with casemates and with facilities 
for mounting heavy guns. The view from this 
point was even finer than that from the stone 
cross. Added to the ocean outlook on the left 
and the undulating masses of green hill and 



The Hill- Country, 151 

pasture on the right, was the whole entotirage 
of San Sebastian in front. Chubillo was at our 
feet ; the eye ranged round the grand sweep of 
the Concha to the city, where the sharp divi- 
sion between the old and the new towns was 
marked by the dark masses of trees along the 
Alameda ; beyond uprose the white breakers 
of the Zurriola, with the sea outside tinged for 
at least half a mile by the sand-laden waters of the 
Urumea ; still farther beyond lay the quiet bay 
of Pasages, and the church and houses of Lezo, 
and Ulia, and the whole long ridge of Jaizqui- 
bel with its crest of towers ; the slopes of wood 
and pasture dotted with white dwellings, rising 
back from the Urumea ; the lofty, undulating 
summits bounding the horizon ; then, coming 
round again to the right, the eye was caught by 
San Marco's bastions frowning over the valley 
of Oyarsun, and by Santa Barbara, with its 
rocky palisades, looking protectingly down on 
Hernani. 

Having made the circuit of the mountain, we 
descended by paths lined with the beautiful red 
bruy^re, the fragrant anise, and the wild, spicy 



152 In the Shadow of the Pyrenees. 

pink ; among trees of apple, pear, peach, nec- 
tarine and fig, and down through a farm-yard 
and orchard to Antigua, the suburb of San 
Sebastian, where the tall chimneys announce 
the cement-factory and the glass-works, in which 
latter, it is said, about six thousand bottles of 
all shapes and sizes are daily produced. 

From mountain-glory to glass and mortar is 
somewhat of a leap ; nevertheless, having taken 
the leap and alighted among the factories, I may 
close this chapter with a few words about the 
manufactures of this little province. Those who 
have been wont to regard this corner of Spain 
as the home of a semi-barbarous race, unworthy 
a traveller's notice, would be surprised at the 
number and variety of the industries which are 
plied in these quiet valleys. Tolosa manufac- 
tures cloth, paper, straw fabrics, Basque caps, 
flour, copper boilers, leather, and carriages. 
Along with Irun, Pasages, Hernani, Arechava- 
leta, Fuenterrabia, Onate, Villafranca, Villareal, 
and Zumarraga, it represents Lucifer in the fab- 
rication of matches, the consumption of which, 
by this nation of smokers, is enormous. Azpei- 



The Hill' Country, 153 

tia, like Renteria, Andoain, Lasarte, Villa- 
bona, and Zarauz, furnishes linen, and adds 
thereto nails and fire-arms. The latter are also 
made at Eibar, Plasencia, and Elgoibar. La- 
sarte and Beasain contain iron-foundries ; the 
lead-works overlook Pasages ; the rumble of 
flour-mills ascends from Lasarte, Andoain, Ur- 
nieta, Usurbil, Tolosa, and Mondragon ; while 
Ibarra offers pianos to the Muses, and sends up 
the odors of leather to mingle with those from 
Tolosa, Legazpia, Mondragon, and Onate. Be- 
sides the cement- and glass-factories, San Sebas- 
tian contains a lithographic establishment, brew- 
eries, manufactories of paper, sulphuric acid, 
soap and candles, lead pipes, hats, cigars, and 
chemicals. 

Homeward through Antigua. The setting 
sun throws Igueldo into sharp outline, and, to 
a good eye, the stone cross is distinctly visible. 
The soldiers are slowly defiling from the parade 
ground. The sound of the accordeon from the 
midst of a crowd gathered in front of a little 
inn, indicates that the dance is in full career ; 
and behold, here is our long and solemn friend 



154 -^^ i^^ Shadow of the Pyrenees. 

again, capering and snapping his fingers with 
his wonted gravity. Up, under the circular rifle- 
tower, with its narrow loopholes, and past the 
little Church of Antigua, and along the terrace 
overlooking the beach, where two priests are 
walking in grave conference, and a nurse is lead- 
ing some pretty children to peep over the para- 
pet. The voice of the sea welcomes us home, 
and we hurry down to the beach to throw our- 
selves into the arms of the glorious surf, and to 
lie cradled on the sunset-tinted waves. 



A zpe itia and L oyola. 155 



CHAPTER XIII. 

AZPEITIA AND LOYOLA. 

" Yet hath Pamplona seen, in former time, 
A moment big with mightier consequence. 
Affecting many an age and distant clime. 
That day it was which saw in her defence, 
Contending with the French before her wall, 
A noble soldier of Guipuzcoa fall, 
Sore hurt, but not to death. For when long care 
Restored his shattered leg, and set him free. 
He would not brook a slight deformity, 
As one who, being gay and debonnair, 
In courts conspicuous as in camps must be : 
So he, forsooth, a shapely boot must wear ; 
And the vain man, with peril of his life. 
Laid the recovered limb again beneath the knife. 
Long time upon the bed of pain he lay, 
Whiling with books the weary hours away ; 
And from that circumstance and this vain man 
A train of long events their course began, 
Whose term it is not given us yet to see." 

— SouTHEV : Tale of Paraguay. 

COFFEE was served early this morning, 
while the surf-swept rocks at the foot of 
Chubillo were yet in shadow. The promenade 
overlooking the bathing pavilions was almost 
deserted ; the barge with its platforms and 
streamers was leisurely getting into position 



156 In the Shadow of the Pyrenees. 

for the day ; the red and yellow flags along the 
deep water line flapped lazily in the light morn- 
ing wind, and a solitary bather's head appeared 
amid the listless breakers. Making our way to 
the railroad-station over the bridge of Santa 
Catalina and down the unshaded, dusty stretch 
along the Urumea, we caught the morning 
train for Madrid, and a charming ride of about 
an hour, aflbrding fine views of Hernani and 
Andoain, brought us to Tolosa. The station is 
at considerable distance from the town, and we 
walked down the long street, passing the ball- 
court, and stopping just outside the city gate 
to examine a clumsy old church with a great 
porch, on one end of which was painted a warn- 
ing against playing ball on the consecrated 
ground. It proved to be a miserable, tawdry 
aflair within. A chapel near the entrance con- 
tained a hideous death's-head with an inscrip- 
tion which recalled the one so often seen in 
New England churchyards : 

' ' As you are now so once was I ; 
As I am now so you must be." 



A zpeitia and Loyola. 157 

In the open space before the church some sol- 
diers were lounging ; a long, low building bore 
the sign Posada Americana; (American, in Spain, 
being always understood of South America) and 
a fountain in front of the city gate splashed and 
dripped with a pleasant sound in the quiet air. 
A long, narrow, dark street, presenting the 
usual characteristics of Basque towns, led past 
the busy market-place to an open square, where 
was the Hotel Mendia and the stage office, and 
where we applied in vain for a carriage to Az- 
peitia. The official, however, directed us to a 
place not far from the entrance of the town, 
where we found an old, bare-legged woman 
sweeping the stairs, by whom a man was sum- 
moned who agreed to provide us a vehicle. 
Strolling forth into the street, we encountered 
the public crier beating his drum and making 
proclamations which seemed to suggest coffee 

to J- , for he forthwith led the way through 

a dry-goods store and up a flight of stairs, into 
a small room which displayed a table covered 
with a soiled red cloth, some flowers in vases, 
two guitars hanging against the wall, some 



158 In the Shadow of the Pyrenees. 

maps, and a picture of a famous giant, wearing 
a prodigious cocked hat. There was also a 
photograph of a company of young men with 
guitars in their hands. It was formerly a cus- 
tom for Spanish students, in their vacations, to 
travel with their guitars as itinerant musicians, 
living on what might be given them for their 
music. The custom, which had declined, was 
subsequently revived ; and one company hav- 
ing visited Paris, was received with great en- 
thusiasm and gave a series of highly successful 
entertainments. This led to the formation of a 
regular society, or musical student-guild. 

Coffee appeared after reasonable delay, and 
having partaken and descended to the street, 
we found a comfortable coach with a team of 
stout mules, and a lithe, good-natured young 
fellow perched upon the box. 

Tolosa lies in the midst of a fine mountain 
amphitheatre on the left bank of the little river 
Oria. Its foundation dates back to about 121 5. 
In the fourteenth century it was the political 
centre of twenty-four *' localities" of the prov- 
ince, and, being strongly walled, was the ar- 



A 2peztta and Loyola, 159 

senal of Guipuzcoa. Its original walls were 
destroyed in the fifteenth century, in order to 
enlarge their compass. It was at its best in 
that century, and took an active part in the 
wars with France. Gradually its forces dimin- 
ished, its dependencies became autonomous, and 
at the end of the eighteenth century it was 
only a little town without any distinctive in- 
dustry, and a kind of tributary to San Sebas- 
tian. In the civil war from 1833 to 1840, it 
fell into the hands of the Carlists, was evacu- 
ated by the liberals in 1874, and was the resi- 
dence of Don Carlos and his court until 1876. 
Tolosa was the scene, in 1840, of the abdication 
of Charles Albert, King of Sardinia, who, after 
having been beaten in the battle of Novara by 
Radetzki, passed through Tolosa in disguise on 
his way to Portugal. An accident prevented 
him from continuing his journey, and the same 
evening he was met by General La Marmora 
and the Count of San Martino, who demanded 
and received his abdication, which was signed 
before the notary of Tolosa. In the last half 
century Tolosa has become a very important 



i6o In the Shadow of the Pyrenees, 

manufacturing town, its environs being occu- 
pied with paper, cotton, and woollen mills, and 
with foundries and workshops. The parish 
church of the seventeenth century, which we 
did not have time to visit, is said to be one of 
the finest in the province. 

Our road ran for awhile along the shaded 
Oria, and then began to ascend. The day was 
superb. Trees in abundance lined the track, 
chestnut, poplar, oak, ash, hazel, and now and 
then a fig. As we mounted, the backward 
view of the mountains around Tolosa was very 
striking, and soon Hernio rose on the right 
across the valley at our feet, over three thou- 
sand feet above the sea-level, an enormous 
mass of gray limestone with a tumor-like pro- 
jection on one end, its lower slopes wooded, 
but its crest bare and crowned with a cross. 
At its foot lay the little town of Albistur, just 
above which, on a spur of the mountain, my at- 
tention was drawn to a patch of ground which 
illustrated the careful cultivation practised in 
these mountain districts. It fairly bristled with 
rocks; but the whole space was nevertheless 



Azpeitia afid Loyola. i6i 

cafefully ploughed and sown, the furrows mak- 
ing a perfect labyrinth among the rocks. 

At this point we overtook a lean, seedy-look- 
ing little man, stripped to his shirt for walking, 
and bearing the mail, who asked for a '' hft," 
and, mounting beside the driver, rode for some 
distance. After he had alighted, the driver ob- 
served that he was a poet, and wrote canzoni. 

J remarked that he was rather leaUy to which 

coachy sententiously replied, "Like all poets." 
Not far from Albistur stood a house with an in- 
scription to the effect that Don Valentin de 
Olano, "glory of Guipuzcoa," eminent as an 
orator and defender of the fueros, died there 
suddenly on June 27, 1851. Hernio constantly 
asserted himself, his tumor becoming more 
pronounced as we advanced. When we came 
to descending ground, our driver employed an 
original species of brake, — nothing more nor 
less than a pair of old alpargatas, or cloth san- 
dals, which he said took better hold than the 
ordinary brake. 

Now, coming toward us over the hill in 

front, appeared a party of peasant-women, driv- 
n 



1 62 In the Shadow of the Pyrenees, 

ing among them a donkey which would almost 
have gone into a good-sized overcoat-pocket, 
his panniers laden with enormous loaves of 
breati. Passing Bidain, we came to a halt at 
Goyaz, a hamlet consisting of about twenty 
houses ; the inn being designated by the green 
branches over the door. Near the entrance 
stood a huge stone trough, and on one side 
of the door, cut in the black limestone door- 
post, appeared a little holy-water vessel, its 
bowl inscribed with a crescent, and a cross 
above. The sound of church-bells echoed softly 
among the mountains. The little church-porch 
was a mere shed of rough beams and boards ; 
children were everywhere noticeable for the 
light color of their complexions, notwithstand- 
ing their habitual exposure to the sun. 

At the inn at Goyaz two dun cows were 
added to our team of mules, and after a steep 
and hard pull of a couple of miles, we came out 
at the summit of the pass upon a glorious pros- 
pect. Below, in the valley, lay the town of 
Regil, or Erregil, meaning, so the driver said, 
'* to kill easily ;" the spot being the scene of an 



A zpettza and Loyola. 163 

ancient battle with the Romans. The sea of 
hills stretched away in front toward the ocean, 
which was hidden by the haze. In line with the 
break in the mountains which reveals the sea, 
rose the hermitage of Ingrazia on its steep 
height, and to the left the tremendous mass of 
Itzarraiz, bare, gray, savage, at the foot of which 
lies Azpeitia. Far behind were the heights of 
Aralar, and Hernio still refused to retire from 
view. The fresh, pure mountain air, laden with 
the sweet odors of the forest, stirred the blood 
like wine ; a hawk hung poised far up in the 
crystalline air ; the turquoise sky, the purple- 
gray masses of rock, the green, wooded slopes, 
the sun-saturated haze veiling the distant sea, 
the brown patches of tilled soil, the white dwell- 
ings clustered round the venerable church- 
towers — formed a scene in which the grandest 
outlines were offset by the richest and most 
varied contrasts and combinations of color. 

We went down between banks purple with 
bruyere, and through woods which revealed, 
under arches of ash-boughs, pleasant glimpses 
of fields and streams, until at our feet appeared 



1 64 In the Shadoiv of the Pyrenees. 

Azpeitia, with Itzarrai'z in full view, and the 
dome of Loyola beyond the town. It was two 
o'clock when we reached the inn, and breakfast 
was doubly welcome under the stimulus of the 
mountain air ; after which, leaving J to ne- 
gotiate for transport to Zarauz, I made my way 
down the Calle Iglesia, between rows of work- 
men seated before their shops and weaving the 
soles of alpargatas with stout flaxen cord, to 
the church. It was by far the most pretentious 
building of this character I had seen in the 
province. Tradition asserts that it was built by 
the Templars. It is a mixture of Roman and 
Gothic, with a steeple tower, a very large porch, 
and with its portal wholly of jasper and granite. 
The ceiling rests on large columns ; the space 
beneath the choir is enclosed, forming a chapel, 
the sides of which are apparently of some 
highly polished stone, and the ceiling is very 
handsomely groined. The high altar is over- 
loaded with sculptures, and the font is exhibited 
in which Loyola received baptism. 

'By the time I had completed my hurried 
visit and returned to the inn, J had suc- 



^ 

# 



A zpeitia and Loyola. 165 

ceeded in engaging an uninviting vehicle, to 
which a pair of mules was being attached ; and, 
with regrets for our comfortable Tolosan estab- 
lishment, we cHmbed into our places and es- 
sayed the heart-shaking, marrow-cleaving pave- 
ments of Azpeitia. The narrow street, with its 
grateful shade, soon debouched into a hot, un- 
sheltered road, with bare Itzarraiz blazing and 
glinting in the sun on the right, and the great 
dome of the Monastery of Ignatius Loyola di- 
rectly in front at the distance of about half a 
mile. 

In 1682, Anne of Austria, the mother of 
Charles the Second, undertook to erect a mon- 
astery and a college on this spot where Loyola 
was born ; but the work was prohibited by an 
interdict of Charles the Third. The casa solar 
— the house of his birth — passed by inheritance 
to the family of Alcanices y Oropesa, of whom 
Anne purchased it in 168 1, under the conditions 
that the house of Loyola should remain intact, 
that in the new edifice projected, suitable ac- 
commodations should be provided for the mar- 
quises of the family, and that the principal 



1 66 l7t the Shadow of the Pyrenees. 

chapel in the church should be adorned with 
their arms and reserved for their sepulture. The 
work was begun in 1684, and slowly progressed 
until 1766. 

A fancy of the same kind which has discov- 
ered the figure of a gridiron in the outlines of 
the Escorial, has described the bird's-eye view 
of the Monastery of Loyola as representing an 
eagle with outstretched wings ; the chapel and 
peristyle forming the head, and the buildings 
of the convent and seminary the two wings. 
The effect of the central mass of buildings, which 
is rather imposing by reason of the great dome 
and the rich sculpture of the fagade, is marred 
by the unfinished wings. A broad marble stair- 
case of two stages mounts between a pair of 
defaced stone lions to the peristyle, which pre- 
sents a semicircular front of marble almost black, 
relieved by Corinthian columns and a richly 
sculptured frieze, and pierced by three door- 
ways with round arches, and with the royal es- 
cutcheon of Castile and Leon over the cen- 
tral opening. The ample vestibule into which 
the door opens is embellished with cheap, 



Azpeitia and Loyola. 167 

plaster statues of Loyola, Xavier, and other 
worthies of the Society of Jesus ; while the 
Virgin-mother, flanked by two cherubs, is en- 
throned above the door which opens into the 
church. 

The general plan of the church within is that 
of a square, with the dome directly over the 
centre, and the high-altar facing the entrance. 
This altar is distinguished by a shrine of marble 
mosaic containing a figure of the Virgin, which 
is bathed in a soft, rich glow by means of crim- 
son curtains arranged in a window behind it. 
Everywhere marble, marble, cold, pitiless mar- 
ble, of all conceivable colors and combined in 
an infinite variety of patterns. Each altar is a 
new achievement of patience and ingenuity. 
The most voluminous draperies would scarcely 
dissipate the sense of coldness and hardness 
which asserts itself above all the riches of color 
and gilding, and is rendered even more oppres- 
sive by the warm, rosy atmosphere which en- 
velops the Virgin. On all the rigid marble 
lines pours down a flood of white, glaring light 
from the great dome, round the base of which 



1 68 In the Shadow of the Pyrenees, 

runs a cornice resting on white marble brack- 
ets, and which is decorated with shocking taste. 
The choir is over the main entrance, where the 
organ seems to have found room with some 
difficulty. 

From the vestibule a door on one side opens 
into an arched passage, one side of which is 
formed by the house of Loyola, built of rough 
brick, and bearing over the door the inscription, 
in gold letters on a black marble slab, Casa SO- 
LAR DE Loyola. Aqui nacio S. Ignacio en 
149 1. Aqui visitado por S. Pedro y la S. S. 
ViRGEN, se entrego i. Dios EN 1 52 1.' An- 
other slab bears the family escutcheon of Loyola, 
two dogs or wolves disputing over a cauldron 
suspended by a chain. No officials or attend- 
ants were to be seen anywhere. The profound- 
est silence reigned over the whole establish- 
ment. 

Entering by another door into a hall where 
there was a small chapel at the foot of the 

^ Family house of Loyola. Here Saint-Ignacio was born in 
1491. Here, having been visited by Saint-Peter and by the 
most Holy Virgin, he gave himself to God in 1521. 



A zpeitia and Loyola. 169 

stairs, we mounted the staircase, pausing for 
a moment to look at a revolting picture of 
the crucifixion over the first landing. The 
Savior's form was draped in a kind of petticoat, 
from the waist nearly to the ankles ; and the 
heads of the nails in the feet were as large as a 
quarter of a dollar. The staircase led to an 
apartment on the second floor, two sides of 
which were occupied by a row of confessionals, 
while behind a railing on another side were 
three chapels, one of them containing in a 
glass case a mask of Loyola. On the story 
above, the stairway ended in a broad landing, 
the ceiling of which was covered with gaudy 
frescoes. A door near the head of the stairs 
opened into a chapel, little higher than a man's 
head, and with the ceiling covered with sculp- 
tures in wood representing scenes in the life of 
Loyola. The three altars, encrusted with sil- 
ver, were behind a railing which reached to 
the ceiling ; and the whole enclosed space was 
kept in subdued, rosy light by means of crim- 
son curtains. From within the railing a door 
opened into an inner chapel. In the outer 



170 In the Shadow of the Pyrenees. 

apartment, Saint-Peter and the Virgin are said to 
have appeared to Ignacio while recovering from 
his wound received at Pamplona. Two women 
kneeled or sat in reverent silence by the railing. 
With all the stony splendors of the church, and 
the elaborate and costly adornments of this 
chapel, the effect was more than tawdry and 
vulgar. It went deeper than that to one who 
knew the history of the remarkable order which 
it represented. It carried with it the sense of a 
strong, pitiless hand laid upon the breast. To 
a man fresh from the great world of outspoken 
thought, from the robust contact of men, and 
the healthful clash of opinion — to one with the 
free breath of the glorious mountains yet in his 
nostrils and the salt of the ocean-spray scarce 
gone from his lips — this place was like a prison 
and a baby-house combined. The subtle, pas- 
sionless, inexorable policy of the order seemed 
to have infused itself into the atmosphere. 
Though no warden appeared, and no attendant 
followed the visitor through the desolate halls, 
one might well feel as though a wary eye saw 
every movement from some secret spying-place, 



Azpeitia and Loyola, I'/i 

and that the very walls conveyed each word to 
a practised ear. The remorseless, passive final- 
ity darkly hinted in the initials over the en- 
trance, P. A. C.,^ might well make it a relief to 
bound down those marble steps and turn the 
back upon the source of the most consummate 
piece of devilish ingenuity that ever wrought 
to corrupt the human soul, to dwarf and per- 
vert the human intellect, or to menace the most 
precious institutions of society. 

The entire right wing, as one faces the build- 
ing, is unfinished — an unsightly mass of stone. 
A part of the fagade of the left wing is merely 
a wall built in front of the house of Loyola, and 
the remainder of the wing is occupied for mo- 
nastic and school purposes. A small hotel ad- 
joins the monastery, (i) 

Returning to Azpeitia, our mules were ex- 
changed for horses, and moving slowly out of 
the square before the inn, under a volley of 
stares from the neighboring Casino, we rattled 

^ Perinde ac Cadaver — "just like a corpse" — a terrible ex- 
pression of the utter, passive submission which the Jesuit vows 
to the superiors of his order. 



172 In the Shadow of the Pyrenees. 

through the main street and emerged upon the 
road to Zarauz. The Urola, with its pleasantly- 
shaded banks and neat, arched bridges, was on 
our right, while high, wooded slopes rose di- 
rectly from the roadside on our left. Now we 
plunge into the shadow of Erlo's high, bare, 
pyramidal peak, and race down hill and over 
a fine bridge into Cestona, with its mineral 
springs, looking out from its little promontory 
upon the valley of the Urola and across to 
mountains studded with treasures of rock-crys- 
tal, jasper, and marble. The convalescents 
gathered in front of the bathing-houses rouse 
themselves from their afternoon lounge at the 
noise of our rattling chariot. The road turns 
off to the right and follows the right bank of the 
Urola to Oiquina, from which it mounts over 
a steep hill commanding one of the finest val- 
ley-views in the whole province, and then de- 
scends by a long series of zigzags. The sea 
flashes into view between the headlands, pleas- 
ant villas appear on each side, and we dash, at 
six o'clock, into the public square of Zarauz, 
one of the oldest towns of Guipuzcoa, and built 



Azpeitia and Loyola. i "j^^ 

at the head of a beautiful bay. Our team is 
changed again. This time it is a mixtOy that 
is to say, a horse and a mule; and, judgi;ng 
from the frequent and vigorous applications of 
the whip to the unfortunate mule, the combina- 
tion would not seem to be a happy one. The 
young driver handles his whip with such a breezy 
looseness, and with such a profusion of flour- 
ishes, that it becomes necessary to remind him 
that his team and not his passengers are the 
proper subjects for flagellation, and that two 
pairs of eyes are in some peril from his graceful 
backstrokes. As we leave the town we catch a 
backward view of the bay of Zarauz with its 
odd, saddle-back promontory, and a short ride 
brings us to the bank of the Orio, where a fine 
bridge is being constructed ; but, pending its 
completion, we must rely on the clumsy barge, 
pulled across by ropes, for our ferriage to the 
dirty little fishing-town of Orio. Our mixto 
has given place to two good horses, and our 
lumbering Azpeitian car to a light basket-phae- 
ton. Orio is left behind ; Mount Hernio is in 
view on the right, glorious with rosy sunset 



1 74 In the Shadow of the Pyrenees. 

clouds ; the moon is up, and hangs in purple 
haze over the mountains as we speed along the 
Orio through Aguinagua and Usurbil, until 
Chubillo looms darkly up, and we catch the 
gleam from Santa Clara and the lights of San 
Sebastian. 



Sprhigs and Chateaux, 175 



CHAPTER XIV. 

SPRINGS AND CHATEAUX. 

" I'll show thee the best springs." — SfiAKSPEAKE. 

GUIPUZCOA might be supposed, from 
the previous pages, to be little short 
of a paradise. But every Eden has its serpent ; 
and though this province is not a territor}'' of 
snakes, its capital city, at least, bears away the 
palm for fleas. I am morally convinced that 
the Cantabrian coast is the primitive home of 
the flea, and that the first created flea jumped 
on the Cantabrian sands when the morning-stars 
sang together. He partakes of the hardy, en- 
terprising, indomitable character of the other 
Cantabrians. Like the Basque mountaineer, 
the Basque flea has successfully resisted the en- 
ervating influences of modern civilization. He 
feeds his strength and renews his youth on the 
blood of the Anglo-Saxon ; but this modern 



176 In the Shadow of the Pyrenees. 

infusion does not tend in the least to abate 
either his ferocity or his venom. He develops 
the stealthy caution of a Vidocq, the dan of a 
chasseur of the Old Guard, and the remorse- 
lessness of a Nana Sahib. Seriously, this is the 
one drawback to the pleasure of a summer on 
the Cantabrian coast, except to those happily 
constituted, insensate cuticles on which the 
poison produces no effect. 

If then the victim, wearied out with the ever 
renewed and fruitless hunt for these little de- 
mons, and sore with daily and nightly excoria- 
tions, resolves to fold his tent and silently 
steal away, he is still not absolutely sure of 
getting away when he will. Spanish rail- 
way travel involves possibilities for which the 
stranger, whose ideas of railroading have 
been formed in England, or America, or 
France, will scarcely be prepared. For ex- 
ample, having come from Bayonne one day to 
San Sebastian for a brief visit, I arranged to 
return by a train advertised to leave at four 
o'clock, which would bring me back about 
dusk. On applying at the station I was re- 



springs and Chateaux, 177 

fused a ticket, on the ground that the train was 
already full ; and had the mortification of see- 
ing it move off before my eyes. The next and 
only train being a slow one, and stopping an 
hour or more at the frontier, I reached Bayonne 
half an hour before midnight, much to the re- 
lief of two frightened daughters. Of course I 
telegraphed, but the operator left out the im- 
portant part of the despatch — the hour of my 
arrival, besides misspelling both the name and 
the address. 

Back at Bayonne again. A man who, firmly 
entrenched in his apartment, has calmly sur- 
veyed for several weeks the repulse of new ar- 
rivals from the over-full hotel, is naturally a 
little chagrined, on returning to his old haunts, 
to find himself a new arrival and repulsed. 
Nevertheless, the Saint-fitienne was full. Mad- 
ame B was inconsolable but helpless. How- 
ever, she despatched Monsieur B to see 

what could be done, who returned in a few 
minutes saying he had secured a room for me 
down a neighboring street ; and that matter 

being disposed of, I was at liberty to repair to 
12 



178 In the Shadow of the Pyrenees. 

the pink-flowered dining-room, and to receive 
the hearty greetings of my keen-eyed Httle 
gargon, and indulge in the leisurely comfort of 
dinner ; only it was strange to sit there alone, 
without the two dear, bright young faces which 
had borne me company there for a month. 

I was off for a fortnight's trip in the higher 
Pyrenees, a plan which, as the event proved, 
was utterly defeated by the incessant rains. But, 
being again in Bayonne, I would not lose the 
opportunity to visit Cambo, one of the cele- 
brated v/atering-places of the Basque country, 
which abounds in mineral springs. Besides 
those at Cestona, referred to in the previous 
chapter, there are the waters of Santa Agueda 
near Mondragon in the southwestern corner of 
Guipuzcoa ; the sulphuro-saline springs at Are- 
chavaleta, where are also iron springs ; with 
others at Cortezubi, Zaldivar, and elsewhere. 
Cambo, one of the most charming of these re- 
sorts, is situated on the Nive, about two hours 
by carriage from Bayonne. The road, issuing 
from the Porte d'Espagne, turns to the left past 
a fine hospital founded by M. Lormand, " the 



springs and Chateaux. 179 

benefactor of Bayonne." Just beyond this, 
some gray stone ruins appear, crowning a 
little eminence and surrounded with fine shade- 
trees. These are the remains of the Chateau de 
Marrac, built in 1707 by the widow of Charles 
the Second of Spain, Anne, who refused to live 
there because one of her maids of honor had 
occupied an apartment before her. In 1808, 
Napoleon, then maturing his great scheme, the 
prologue of which was the occupation of the 
Spanish throne by his brother Joseph, pur- 
chased the chateau as a convenient place from 
which to conduct his Spanish affairs in person. 
Here he received Charles the Fourth and Fer- 
dinand the Seventh. Here were signed the 
abdication of Ferdinand and the cession of all 
rights by Charles ; and from this spot Joseph 
departed for Spain to assume his throne. The 
chateau was finally burned, at the instigation 
of the English, it is said, in 1825. 

The road, skirting the outworks of the forti- 
fications of Bayonne, passes through Ustaritz, 
once the capital of the viscount of Labourd, 
and one of the ancestral council-centres of the 



i8o In the Shadow of the Pyrenees. 

Basques, who met for their deliberations under 
the ancient oaks. The place retains many of its 
Basque characteristics, though modern innova- 
tion is apparent, especially in the church, which 
is a new Gothic structure in very marked con- 
trast to the churches of the Basque villages gen- 
erally. On the hills little groups of white houses 
are perched amid orchards. The shade becomes 
denser as the road descends toward the river, 
past the seminary of Laressore on its high, 
walled terrace lined with poplars, and between 
lines of chestnut and oak to Cambo, which con- 
sists of two parts : Bas Cambo, on the bank'of 
the Nive, which here describes a semicircle, 
and Haut Cambo, on a terrace two or three 
hundred feet above the river on one of the but- 
tresses of Mount Ursouya. 

The waters of Cambo are charged with both 
sulphur and iron. Their use can be traced back 
to 1635 ; and the thermal establishment was 
founded by a royal ordinance in 1819. A su- 
perstition prevails throughout the country that 
if one drinks of these waters on the twenty-third 
of June, the eve of \\\.^ fete of John the Baptist, 



springs and Chateaux. i8i 

he is insured against sickness for a year ; and 
accordingly, on that day, there is a great as- 
semblage of Basques, and music and dancing 
of course. The brow of the terrace is crowned 
by the excellent hotel Saint-Martin, from the 
wide piazza of which a fine view is obtained of 
the beautiful valley of the Nive. While await- 
ing lunch, I strolled down the shaded road to 
Bas Cambo, and found myself in a sweet little 
Vallombrosa — a shaded opening surrounded by 
a group of neat houses, and flanked on one side 
by the well-appointed bathing establishment, 
near which a pretty suspension-bridge spanned 
the shallow, brawling river ; while along the 
stream ran an avenue of arching trees, to a 
white portico covering a stone basin into which 
the water of an iron-spring poured through a 
pipe. The path, stretching on beyond until it 
was lost in the thick wood, offered a strong 
temptation to prolong my walk ; but the omi- 
nous muttering of thunder and the gathering 
gloom of a summer shower, drove me back 
to the hotel, none too quickly ; for the refresh- 
ing deluge speedily broke and came down, 



1 82 In the Shadow of the Pyi^enees. 

delightfully cooling the air for the homeward 
ride. 

The next morning found me on the early- 
train for Pau ; my only companion in the car- 
riage being a young Frenchman, who was very 
communicative, and bent on disposing of tickets 
for an approaching/"^/^ at Biarritz. The scenery 
along the route is decidedly tame. The road 
follows the Adour for some distance, through 
monotonous plains planted with maize, poplars, 
willows, and elms. A pretty, wooded bend in 
the stream appears near Urt, at the embouchure 
of the Joyeuse or Aran, along the left bank of 
which the train runs for awhile and then crosses 
the Bidouze a little way from its junction with 
the Adour. After leaving Urt, the mountain 
horizon-line of the higher Pyrenees begins to be 
seen on the right ; low hills rise on either side 
of the road, and the ruined chateau of Guiche 
appears above the village of that name. Now 
the train crosses the Bee de Gave. Ten minutes 
at Peyrehorade, where the chief industry is said 
to be the making of fish-lines ; and in ■ truth 
the sleepy-looking town is strongly suggestive 



springs and Chateaux. 183 

of ** the contemplative man's recreation." Now- 
past the crumbling tower of the Chateau d'As- 
premont on the left, and then comes Labatut 
with its donjon-keep, and the high, tiled roofs 
of Puyoo where we meet the train from Dax, 
and, across the Gave, Bellocq, with the six tow- 
ers of its great chateau, of which M. Ferret says 
that he knows only two or three feudal edifices 
as large in all France, (i) Baigts, the next sta- 
tion, is thus summarily dismissed by Joanne : 
** Baigts a une population de looi habitants. 
C'est tout ce qu'on peut en dire." Only think 
of that odd one. Next, Orthez, formerly the 
seat of a Calvinist university where Theodore 
Beza w^as professor. When the town was car- 
ried by assault under the Protestant General 
Montgomery, the story runs that the Gave was 
tinged with blood, and that the soldiers, tearing 
open the tombs, played at skittles with the 
skull of Gaston Phoebus. Here the river cuts 
its way through a mass of rocks which it has 
chiseled into fantastic shapes, and is spanned 
by a fine bridge, carried high above its bed on 
four noble ogivai arches. From the middle of 



184 /^2 the Shadow of the Pyrenees. 

the bridge rises a slender hexagonal tower, with 
a pointed roof, and a window about half way 
up, where it is said that the Calvinists, at the 
capture of Orthez, placed a number of priests, 
giving them their choice between the pikes of 
the soldiers in the rear, and a leap into the 
stream in front. The window is known as la 
fenetre des pretres. 

The Pyrenees are now well up on the horizon, 
the sharp tooth of the Pic du Midi d'Ossau as- 
serting itself strongly above the blue serrated 
ridge. Argagon, Lacq, Artix, Lescar, follow 
in quick succession, and then Pau. There is a 
flashing glimpse of a great bridge. A wide 
plain with a shoal-flecked river is on the right, 
and on the left a long terrace, more than a hun- 
dred feet above the river, on which are perched 
a strange, vast structure with a crown of pointed 
tower-roofs and battlements, and a line of great 
hotels. The omnibus from the Hotel de France 
toils slowly up the zigzag road, and brings 
us out upon the Place Royale, a fine, open 
square, commanding the valley of the Gave 
and the distant Pyrenees, and containing a 



springs and Chdteattx. 185 

marble statue of Henry the Fourth — Henry 
of Navarre — standing erect, with the right 
hand extended and the left resting on the 
sword-hilt. 

I shall not attempt a description of Pau. It is 
not unfamiHar ground to tourists, and in truth 
there is little to describe in the city itself. As 
a city it is one of the tamest and most doleful 
places conceivable. With the single exception 
of the Chateau, it does not contain a noteworthy 
building. The churches are so commonplace 
that one is not even at pains to remember their 
names. There is a Casino, remarkable chiefly 
for the splendid prospect it commands ; a Palais 
de Justice, and a Caserne, said to be one of the 
largest in France. After a long drive through 
the streets and in the suburbs, one returns with 
a general impression of a pale, gray, monoto- 
nous town — its distinctive traits diluted by its 
accommodation to English tastes — and an end- 
less succession of villas. The charms of Pau 
consist, as most readers know, in its delicious 
winter climate, its magnificent mountain-view, 
^nd the social gayeties which attend the annual 



1 86 In the Shadow of the Pyrenees, 

sojt>urn of the three thousand or more EngHsh 
visitors from October to May. 

Henry of Navarre is the tutelary genius of the 
place, and the chateau which bears his name is 
the real gem of the town. Tradition says that 
the Ossalois, the ancient proprietors' of this part 
of France, gave to some Merovingian viscounts 
the ground for a chateau, the boundaries of 
which were marked by ^xqq, pieux or stakes. 
In the Bearnais dialect pieu is paii^ and hence 
the chateau was called Castet du Paii, the name 
passing from it to the town. Erected on the 
western end of the great terrace, where it slopes 
down to a pretty, w^ooded park, it is a mass of 
buildings of different dates, the whole forming an 
isosceles triangle with the base toward the east. 
A broad ditch separates the promontory on 
which it stands from the main terrace. Crossing 
this by a bridge which bears the name of Louis 
the Thirteenth, we enter the triangular court un- 
der a richly sculptured portico of marble, on the 
left of which rises the most remarkable feature of 
the building — the square donjon-tower erected 
by Gaston Phoebus in the fourteenth century. 



springs and Chateaux, 187 

Its walls are seven feet thick, and its crenelated 
top is a hundred and twelve feet from the pave- 
ment. At its foot is a small modern chapel, 
with a window behind the altar representing 
the adoration of the Magi, after Zurbaran. Di- 
rectly opposite rises the tower of Montaiiset or 
Monte-Oiseau, so called because the ascent 
within was by means of ladders which could 
be drawn up after mounting. A fascinating 
mystery invests this structure, which originally 
seems to have had no opening in its walls, the 
gate at the bottom having been broken through 
in 1793 when the castle was sacked by the Rev- 
olutionists ; and dark hints of torture and of 
hideous, lonely imprisonment attach to the 
seven or eight straitened dungeons or oubliettes 
which have been found within the thickness of 
the walls. 

Round the triangular court the roofs rise 
steeply, faced with elaborately-carved dormers. 
Entering by a small door at the western end, 
we turn into the salle des gardes^ a large hall with 
a groined .ceiling and an immense fire-place ; 
thence into the officers' dining room, containing 



1 88 In the Shadow of the Pyrenees. 

statues of Henry the Fourth and Sully. Ad- 
joining is the grand salle a manger, eighty-five 
feet in length, its ceiling of dark wood, gilded, 
and the walls hung with Gobelin tapestry repre- 
senting hunting scenes. Then comes the grand 
staircase, where the groined ceiling bears at the 
intersections the initials of Henry and Margaret 
of Valois, and glimpses of the distant Pyrenees 
are caught through the deep embrasures of the 
windows. A succession of apartments follows, 
filled with carved bedsteads, tapestries, chests, 
cabinets, chairs, sculptured mantels and Sevres 
vases. The interest culminates in the chamber 
where Henry the Fourth first saw the light in 
1553, and where hangs the royal cradle under a 
canopy — a single tortoise-shell suspended from a 
tripod. Another room contains Gobelins, after 
Teniers, representing peasants dancing ; and in 
another is the bed of Louis the Fourteenth, cov- 
ered with rich tapestry embroidered by the ladies 
of Saint-Cyr, under the direction of Madame 
de Maintenon. 

It is wearisome work at best, this defiling 
through a series of rooms with a score or so of 



springs and Chateaux. 189 

people, and an attendant speaking his little piece 
in each apartment. It was a relief to descend 
into the park and leisurely inspect the huge, 
quaint old structure through the overarching 
trees. The front, with its twin peaked towers, 
presents a charming effect at the end of the per- 
spective of boughs. But the crowning charm 
of Pau, after all, is furnished neither by history 
nor by art, but by nature. The view from the 
terrace is a dream of beauty ; one of those scenes 
which always emerges in sharp outline out of 
the crowding reminiscences of travel. It recalls 
the prospect from the Schanzli at Bern, yet it 
differs widely from that, both in detail and in 
general effect. At Bern, the eye does not leap 
at once to the mountains, but is caught and 
stayed half way by the bright little city with its 
towers and terraces and masses of shade. There, 
moreover, the undertone of the scene is imparted 
by the contrast of the eternal snows with the 
fresh green of summer. Here the more genial 
sun banishes perpetual snow to a height of nine 
thousand feet ; so that now, in the late summer, 
the woody slopes beyond the Gave shade off 



190 In the Shadow of the Pyrenees, 

into the blue ridges which cut the sky in longer 
and less serrated lines than those of the Bernese 
range. Out from these lines abruptly leaps the 
Pic du Midi d'Ossau, with its sharp, blue cone, 
over nine thousand feet above the sea-level. 
Farther to the east appears the Pic du Midi 
de Bigorre. There is an element of sternness in 
the Swiss scene which is wanting here. There, 
a dead-line seems to bar all communion between 
the lower lands and the lonely ice-peaks ; while 
here, the Spanish mountains, their tender blue 
softened by the summer haze or deepened into 
violet by the sunset, never appear to lose their 
sympathy or their contact with the green up- 
lands which climb to meet them. Can I better 
close this chapter than by quoting the exquisite 
description of M. Taine, already familiar to so 
many readers? **The current of the river 
sparkles like a girdle of jewels ; the chains of 
hills, yesterday veiled and damp, extend at their 
own sweet will beneath the warming, penetrating 
rays, and mount, range upon range, to spread 
out their green robe to the sun. In the distance 
the blue Pyrenees look like a bank of clouds ; 



springs and Chateaux, 191 

the air that bathes them shapes them into aerial 
forms, vapory phantoms, the farthest of which 
vanish in the evanescent horizon — dim contours, 
that might be taken for a fugitive sketch from 
the lightest of pencils. In the midst of the 
serrate chain the peak du Midi d Ossau lifts its 
abrupt cone ; at this distance, forms are soft- 
ened, colors are blended, the Pyrenees are only 
the graceful bordering of a smiling landscape 
and of the magnificent sky. There is nothing 
imposing about them nor severe ; the beauty 
here is serene, and the pleasure pure." 



192 In the Shadow of the Pyrenees, 



CHAPTER XV. 

LOURDES. 

" In these lay a great multitude of impotent folk, of blind, halt, withered, 
waiting for the moving of the water."— Saint- John. 

THE Pic du Midi shook himself clear from 
the heavy clouds for a few minutes this 
morning, by way of informing us that he was 
still there, and then resigned himself once more 
to the embrace of the mists which concealed his 
brethren. To the sight, at least, the French mon- 
arch's words, *^ There shall be no Pyrenees," were 
realized. Above, it was an all-day fight between 
the sun and the clouds. An occasional gleam of 
sunshine and patch of blue sky awakened hopes 
which collapsed each time as a fresh mass of 
huge clouds rolled up and delivered its burden 
of rain. I strolled about the town, wrote letters, 
and watched the heavens until four o'clock in 
the afternoon, when it became evident that the 
day was going against the sun ; and reluctantly 



Lourdes, 193 

giving up the ride to Eaux Bonnes, I started for 
Lourdes, and arrived there about six o'clock. 

The story of Lourdes has become famihar to 
Christendom. From an obscure, shabby moun- 
tain town, it has blossomed out, within twenty- 
five years, into a centre of devotion and pil- 
grimage worthy to be named with Loretto or 
Compostella. The story, briefly told, is this : 
In the winter of 1858, Bernadette Soubirous, a 
feeble, asthmatic child of fourteen, and daughter 
of a poor peasant of Lourdes, was sent one day 
to the rocks of Massavielle, on the outskirts of 
the village, to gather fuel. Having wandered 
away from her companions to the entrance of a 
grotto in the side of the rock, she suddenly 
heard, as she declared, the sound of rushing 
wind, and, at the same moment, beheld, in a 
niche in the grotto, a beautiful woman in a white 
robe and veil and a blue girdle, and holding in 
her hands a glittering rosary terminating in a 
golden cross. The apparition w^as seen by her, 
as she claimed, eighteen times within five 
months, but by her alone ; for though thousands 
were drawn by her story to visit the grotto, the 
13 



194 ^^ ^-^^ Shadow of the Pyrenees. 

vision did not appear to them. From time to 
time the child brought messages from the ap- 
parition to her priest ; one, to the effect that he 
should cause a church to be built on the hill 
over the grotto, and another that the lady of the 
vision was immaculately conceived. The cure, 
like another Gideon, demanded a sign ; no less 
than that the wild eglantine overhanging the 
rock should blossom with roses. This sign was 
refused, but another was vouchsafed. At one 
of her appearances the vision commanded Ber- 
nadette to eat some grass growing in a corner 
of the grotto, and to dig a hole in the ground. 
Thereupon a stream of water issued forth, and 
flowed outward to the entrance of the cave. 
The spring increased in volume. Soon it was 
noised abroad that it possessed healing virtue. 
Crowds began to flock to the spring ; the Bishop 
of Tarbes issued a solemn mandate declaring 
the miracle authentic. A church was begun 
over the grotto, completed in 1876, and conse- 
crated on the first and second of July of that 
year, on which occasion thirty-five archbishops 
and bishops, with the Cardinal- Archbishop of 



Lourdes, 195 

Paris and the papal nuncio, assisted in the cere- 
monies. Bernadette, who to the end of her 
Hfe continued to affirm the truth of her story, 
soon began to decline in health, and repaired to 
the Ursuline Convent at Nevers, where she died 
a few years ago. It is this story of a sickly and 
ignorant child which has lifted Lourdes from its 
obscurity into the position of one of the great 
religious centres of Roman Catholic Christen- 
dom. Marvellous as the volume of the sacred 
fountain is said to be, it is surpassed by the 
streams of pilgrims which meet there from every 
part of Europe and from America. During the 
first six months, one hundred and fifty thousand 
people are said to have visited the grotto. A 
friend at Pau told me that, only a few days be- 
fore, an immense company from Scotland had 
passed through that town on their way to 
Lourdes. In summer, trains de piete are run 
for pilgrims, and a special entrance and exit are 
reserved for them at the railroad station ; while 
around the grotto and church has arisen, as by 
magic, a circle of convents, shelters for pilgrims, 
and retreats for devotees. 



196 In the Shadow of the Pyrenees. 

The omnibus, lumbering up a wide street, 
past a venerable church, and under the shadow 
of the ancient and dismal castle, deposited me 
in due time under the archway of the Hotel des 
Pyrenees, where I was installed in a stuffy little 
chamber ; and having seen my belongings be- 
stowed therein, I sallied out at once ; and after 
losing my way twice at least, finally reached, 
through some very crooked streets, the scene 
of the miracle and the centre of devotion. From 
the foot of the plateau on which the town is 
built, a plain, laid out in walks, and studded 
with trees, extends along the bank of the Gave. 
At the opposite end of this, perhaps two hun- 
dred feet from the river, and parallel with it, is 
a mass of rock, in the side of which is the grotto, 
while its summit is crowned with the graceful 
monumental church directly facing the city. 
Above this, again, rises another and higher 
ridge, and on the top of it an immense crucifix, 
to which a road is carried, along the side of the 
height toward the church, on enormous and 
carefully-laid masses of masonry. Close by the 
new stone bridge leading from the town to the 



Lourdes. 197 

plain, appears a crucifix with the figures of two 
women at the foot, and near this a huge cross 
arranged with pipes and Httle glass lanterns for 
illumination. About the centre of the plain is 
the great statue of** Our Lady of Lourdes," also 
arranged for illumination, copies of which, of all 
sizes, are multiplied as numerously as were the 
silver models of Diana's temple at Ephesus, and 
are for sale everywhere. The statue professes 
to embody the vision of the Virgin as described 
by Bernadette. Her feet, on each of which is 
a full-blown rose, rest upon a rock encircled 
with a wreath of vines. From beneath her 
golden crown escapes a white veil, thrown back 
from her upturned face, and falling nearly to the 
hem of her white, closely-fitting robe, which is 
relieved by an ample blue scarf round the 
waist. Her hands are clasped, and from her 
right arm depends a rosary. 

Scores of people, with the yellow wooden 
rosaries purchased at the grotto wound round 
their hands or suspended from their necks, were 
returning to the town, some of them with help- 
less Hmbs and pale, suffering faces, wheeled in 



T98 In the Shadow of the Pyrenees. 

perambulators, and others leaning upon the arm 
of a friend or servant. Going toward the grotto, 
I came suddenly, at a turn in the shaded path, 
upon a group of thirty or forty men and 
women, kneeling upon the ground in front of a 
rude wooden enclosure, over the door of which 
was a small statue of the Virgin. Among them 
were two priests and a capuchin friar, and all 
were praying audibly, with their open palms 
extended at their sides, their devotions being 
led by one of the priests, to whom they re- 
sponded as he read sentences from his breviary. 
Every eye was fastened upon the figure above 
the door, through which persons were contin- 
ually passing in and out ; not a person nor a 
circumstance in the passing crowds diverted 
their attention ; their whole demeanor indicated 
the most intense and absorbing devotion. A 
few steps beyond was a low building against 
the rock, the open door of which revealed piles 
of tin cans for the use of pilgrims in carrying 
away the water ; and to the wall was affixed 
an appeal to the faithful for contributions to 
maintain the supply of piscince. Close by was 



Lourdes. 199 

a neat stone tank furnished with brass faucets, 
and bearing an inscription to the effect that the 
water from the grotto had been brought by- 
pipes to this spot ; and here a young priest, 
with his robe tucked up, and displaying a very 
shapely leg, was dispensing the water. Next, 
the grotto itself; a ragged hole in the rock, 
possibly twenty feet high at the entrance, which 
bristled with weather-beaten crutches and canes, 
the souvenirs of recovered cripples, and was 
surmounted with a rudely-arched niche con- 
taining a plaster figure of the Virgin, with the 
inscription Je sins V immaciile Conception. The 
interior was aglow with the light of candles, 
which mingled their unctuous drippings with 
the moisture continually trickling from the roof, 
and revealed a booth, close by the entrance, 
crowded with rosaries and similar knick-knacks. 
The sacred spring is covered with a wire net- 
work, and a crevice displayed a number of let- 
ters addressed to the Virgin. The paved space 
in front of the grotto, for some distance toward 
the river, was occupied by plain wooden benches, 
on which a number of people were seated, lis- 



200 hi the Shadow of the Pyrenees. 

tening to a priest who was discoursing from a 
small, rude pulpit on the right of the entrance ; 
and mingled with these were others, standing 
or kneeling on the pavement. No kind of devo- 
tional demonstration attracted attention. Such 
things are the order of the place. Wheeled 
chairs were scattered everywhere ; people were 
continually passing in and out ; an aged man, 
moving his limbs with the utmost difficulty, was 
tenderly led within by a vigorous young woman 
on whose shoulder he leaned ; and a tall, digni- 
fied, middle-aged gentleman, with an ineffable 
blending of love, pity, and awe in his fine face, 
bore out in his arms a helpless lad, apparently 
of twelve or thirteen years. It was not a sight 
to move the mirth of the most skeptical. The 
evidences of suffering were too many and too 
real for that. There were no extravagant mani- 
festations, but everything proceeded in a quiet, 
almost business-like way ; while the genuine 
kindliness and hopeful sympathy which asserted 
themselves toward the sufferers, appealed to 
something far deeper than a difference of creed. 
It was growing dark as I walked round from 



Lourdes. 201 

the grotto to the front of the church, and 
climbed the high flight of steps leading up to the 
entrance. The church consists of a single nave, 
with the choir at the farther extremity, from 
which radiate three apsides. Chapels, communi- 
cating with each other, line the aisle on both 
sides, and these, as well as the central arches and 
the clere story, are hung with votive offerings, 
including numerous embroidered banners pre- 
sented by prominent towns of France, Italy, and 
elsewhere, as well as by private families. Under 
the church is a crypt filled with similar objects. 
The winding street which led to the town 
from the church, was lined with booths and 
shops crammed with photographs, drinking- 
shells, images of the Lady of Lourdes of all 
sizes, some larger than life ; water-cans, plain 
and gilded ; crosses, and wooden rosaries. Two 
of the largest establishments bore the name of 
Soubirous, indicating that the family of the 
young visionary had not failed to reap material 
advantage, at least, from the saintly reputation 
of their kinswoman. The population of Lourdes 
evidently entertains no doubt that godhness has 



502 In the Shadow of the Pyrenees, 

" promise of the life that now is." Whatever may 
be thought of the miraculous virtue of the foun- 
tain, it is certain that the miracle has been the 
fountain-head of a lively trade. Saint-Peter can- 
not affirm here, as when he healed the cripple at 
the temple-gate : " Silver and gold have I none." 
Beggary is rampant, alike in the persons of the 
dirty vagabonds who whine for alms by the way- 
side, and of the plump Sisters of Charity who be- 
set the stranger at the grotto with polite appeals 
for contributions toward an infirmary or a chapel. 
Hardly was I seated at dinner when the dining- 
room was invaded by two of these ecclesiastical 
sirens in full costume, armed with subscription- 
books, who went the rounds of the table d'hote, 
not neglecting the guests at the private tables. 

Dinner over, I jumped into one of the numer- 
ous hacks about the hotel door, and was whirled, 
at a somewhat alarming pace, back to the bank 
of the Gave, toward which the stream of people 
was already setting. The statue in the middle 
of the plain now appeared under a mimic grotto 
of lights ; the great cross near the bridge was 
ablaze ; the entrance to the church was illumin- 



Lourdes. 203 

ated by a star of gas-jets, while the ** light, 
aerial gallery " round its base 

** burnt like a fringe of fire." 

The gates of the grotto were closed ; the interior 
glittered with the light from countless candles, 
and on the broad area in front was gathered a 
momently increasing crowd, standing, walking, 
filling the benches, kneeling on the pavement, 
and lining the stone parapet along the river. 
Almost every person bore a long, lighted taper, 
with a funnel of paper round the top to protect 
the flame. The night was dark and windless, 
and at intervals a few stars succeeded in break- 
ing through the clouds. Out of the flood of 
light round the grotto rose the vast, buttressed 
wall which supports the platform of the church, 
to the gallery, where the row of lights along the 
balustrade brought out vaguely a priest's face 
here and there turned downward upon the 
crowd, and threw into deeper shadow the dim 
outlines of the church far above. Only the 
murmur of the Gave and the subdued hum of 
conversation broke the silence, until suddenly 



204 Ifi the Shadow of the Pyrenees. 

a voice near the grotto struck the first notes of 
a hymn, and in a moment the strain was taken 
up by hundreds of voices, and, # 

" Like circles widening round 
Upon a clear blue river,'* 

the melody rolled outward from the grotto, over 
plain and stream, to the mountains. People 
came hurrying up by twos and threes, striking 
into the song as they came within hearing ; and 
no sooner was it finished than another was be- 
gun and taken up as before. The effect, under 
the still night and in the open air, was superb : 
there was a contagion in it which I could not 
resist, and I joined in myself. The melodies 
were all of a very simple and popular character, 
like the Moody and Sankey tunes. 

Meanwhile a priest had mounted the little 
pulpit, and reading his text by the light of a 
candle which some one held for him, proceeded 
to deliver a sermon. Not being in a homiletic 
mood, I walked back into the shadow of the 
trees, deepened by the flood of light around the 
grotto, and on to where the Lady of Lourdes 



Lourdes. 205 

stood alone in her illuminated bower, neglected 
for the time, for everybody was hurrying to the 
centre of attraction. I stepped for a moment into 
a large hall close by the river, lighted, and with 
some appointments of a chapel about it, though 
its special design I do not know ; but the music, 
breaking out afresh, quickly recalled me to the 
grotto, to the right of which I now observed 
a road ascending to the level of the church by 
two or three zigzags. The multitude was al- 
ready falling into line and beginning the ascent 
of these terraces, preceded by a great banner. 
They marched t^vo and two, men and women, 
each hand bearing a light and every voice join- 
ing in the hymn of praise to Mary. The line of 
light trailed upward, lengthening out behind the 
banner, and then doubled upon itself as the pro- 
cession turned up the second slope ; while below, 
couple after couple kept falling in, marshalled 
by gentlemanly young men, and swelling the 
chorus : 

"Ave! Ave! Ave Maria!" 

Going hastily round to the front of the church, 
I mounted the road which separates it from the 



2o6 In the Shadow of the Pyrenees. 

high, rocky promontory overlooking it on the 
left, and met the procession as it emerged upon 
the plateau at the side of the church, throwing 
its high, white walls and round arches into 
strong light by the glare of hundreds of tapers. 
At this point the mass divided into two lines on 
opposite sides of the road, and remained stand- 
ing for some minutes, singing all the while ; and 
then, forming as before, they commenced the 
march up the second ascent toward the great 
cross which looks down upon the church and 
the valley. The red glow crept up the tall spire 
as the line of torches mounted — 

" In ordered files — 
One ever-lengthening line of gliding light," 

flashed upon the drops of moisture beading the 
ragged rocks along the path, and brought out 
the overhanging trees in weird, dusky masses, 
such as Dante saw in that fearful wood in the 
seventh circle ; while down from the cross, far 
above, as the stream of light flowed round it, 
rang the burden : 

** Ave ! Ave ! Ave Maria ! " 



Lourdes. 207 

This is no place for the serious discussion of 
a phenomenon which a Protestant can hardly be 
expected to regard without prejudice, and with 
the current explanation of which he will not be 
likely to have much patience. One thing is 
patent, that this whole remarkable development 
of pilgrimage and prayer and healing has grown 
up on the most slender basis conceivable— an 
ignorant and sickly peasant-child's ghost-story. 
No one else ever pretended to have seen the 
vision. Her simple credulity, her delusion even, 
are no subjects for mockery. Let us, as a 
modern divine insists, '* regard the faith of this 
child as charitably as that of theologians and 
pietists, who, in the middle ages, through even 
grosser superstitions, certainly reached toward 
and received the favor of God ; " but the uses 
which an astute religious policy may make of 
her simplicity raise another question quite dis- 
tinct from this. Bernadette's fond fancy and 
the machinery of Lourdes are by no means of 
the same piece, however they may seem to be 
so. As to the evidence furnished by the ap- 
pearance and phenomenal flow of the sacred 



2o8 In the Shadow of the Pyrenees. 

spring — a spring in a region which embraces 
Eaux Bonnes, Eaux Chaudes, Panticosa, Cau- 
terets, Saint-Sauveur, Bareges, Bagneres-de- 
Bigorre, and Luchon, is surely no miracle. This 
neighborhood abounds in grottos like that of 
Massavielle. The Spelugue is only about ten 
minutes' ride from the grotto of the miracle, and 
not far beyond is the Grotte du Loup, which tra- 
verses a great part of the mountain, and in which 
is a deep well where one may hear the dull boil- 
ing of the water far down in the darkness. As for 
the cures, without so much as pretending to chal- 
lenge the array of testimonies collated and dis- 
pensed for the conviction of unbelievers and the 
confirmation of the faithful, the connection of 
the vision and the spring with the cures is by no 
means inevitable. If the realm of religion is full 
of surprises, no less so is that of medical science. 
There is scarcely a physician of average experi- 
ence who has not been baffled by recoveries 
which contradicted his best-verified diagnosis, 
and for which no existing medical knowledge 
could account. The operation of ordinary phys- 
ical laws will doubtless explain and eliminate 



Lourdes. 209 

from the catalogues of Lourdes a goodly number 
of cases, and subtler and less familiar interactions 
of body and spirit another considerable portion ; 
as for the residuum, such cases as ** cancers 
healed in a moment, tumors disappearing in- 
stantaneously, decayed and carious bones be- 
coming sound at the touch of that wondrous 
fountain," ^ I can but say, I share in the wonder ; 
I reject the explanation so far as it is bound up 
with the fantasy of an ignorant child, and with 
that view of the nature and offices of the Mother 
of our Lord, which I believe to be in the face of 
Scripture and of common-sense alike. The Rev. 
S. H. Tyng, Jr., in his pamphlet entitled *' The 
Mountain-Movers," says that nothing is prom- 
ised in connection with the use of the water. 
^^ All emphasis is laid upon believijtg prayer and 
this alone.'' "^ Possibly I do not fairly apprehend 
Dr. Tyng's conception of *' emphasis;" but 
people pressing by thousands into the grotto to 
drink of the water, and into the bath-houses to 

^ From an ingenious plea for modern Romish miracles, in the 
Nineteenth Century, for November, 1882. 
* The italics are mine. 
14 



2IO In the Shadow of the Pyrenees. 

bathe in it, a storehouse piled to the ceiling 
with vessels for carrying it away, scallop-shells 
and piscines on sale by hundreds in the booths 
and shops, barrels of the water sent to every 
part of Europe and to America, certainly seem 
to indicate that all the ** emphasis" is not laid 
upon prayer. Furthermore, if prayer alone is 
the secret of these miraculous cures, why go to 
Lourdes or to any similar place at all ? 

To sum up, Lourdes is a delightful place for a 
picnic ; a good point for the lover of the pictur- 
esque ; a scene of much honest faith and sin- 
cere devotion, and of not a few remarkable cures 
of disease ; the centre of a skilfully-managed 
system for swelling the revenues of the Roman 
Church, and for filling the pockets of the villa- 
gers, and a fosterer of shameless beggary. 



Toulouse, 211 



CHAPTER XVI. 

TOULOUSE. 

" To the stake ! to the stake ! with the heretic crew. 
That day and night vexes all good men and true. 
Shall we let them Saint Scripture and her edicts defile ? 
Shall we banish pure science for Lutherans vile ? 
Do you think that our God will permit such as these 
To imperil our bodies and souls at their ease ? 
To the stake ! to the stake ! the fire is their home ! 
As God hath permitted let justice be done," 

— Translation of a Placard posted in Paris, 1533. 

I HAD counted on another half- day in 
Lourdes, but the morning came in with a 
dead, hopeless, gray sky, and a steady deluge of 
rain, which put mountain excursions out of the 
question. A day in the Hotel des Pyrenees was 
too appalling a prospect to be contemplated for 
a moment ; and finding that there was a train 
for Toulouse at ten o'clock, I took polite leave 
of the thrifty landlady, and proceeded to the 
station, which presented an affecting combination 
of devotion and umbrellas in a crowd of drenched 
pilgrims. Near the door of the waiting-room 



212 hi the Shadow of the Pyrenees. 

stood a fashionably dressed damsel whom one 
might have supposed to be suffering from a 
formidable tumor, had not the swelling at the 
side of her travelling-dress terminated in the 
neck of a gilded water-can. Two elderly gen- 
tlemen in the railway-carriage were likewise 
armed with large wicker flasks, presumably of 
the sacred water. It was a dreary, dreary ride. 
The newly married couple who occupied the 
opposite seat were too staid and decorous to be 
at all interesting : not a feature of the mountain 
landscape was visible, and the rain beat and 
dripped with a dismal persistence. Breakfast 
at Montrejeau was a consummate swindle, a 
poor meal, tardily served and roundly charged 
for, and the train was announced before it could 
be finished. The sight of the great, bricky city 
of Toulouse, about three o'clock, was a relief, if 
only for the prospect of a change. It was still 
pouring as the train entered the station, and 
after considerable delay and confusion, I was 
finally deposited in comfortable quarters at the 
Hotel de I'Europe. 
Toulouse makes its first appeal to the feet. 



Toulouse. 213 

The sidewalks are laid with small pebbles, set 
edgewise in a kind of herring-bone fashion, which 
must render shoemaking a profitable branch of 
industry. One is speedily impressed with the 
justice of M. Taine's observation : ''At the end 
of five minutes your feet tell you, in the most 
intelligible manner, that you are two hundred 
leagues away from Paris." A short walk which 
I took before dinner furnished nothing but a 
prospect of interminable streets, and two of the 
largest loads of hay I ever saw. 

Whatever impression one may carry away 
from Lourdes, he has at least seen there religion 
concerning itself with the sweet and gracious 
work of relieving human misery. At Toulouse 
another phase comes out, not indeed in any- 
thing actually existing, but in the memories re- 
called by its streets and churches, which brand 
it as a historic centre of the most relentless 
bigotry and of the most bloody and ferocious 
persecution in the name of the Christian faith. 
Toulouse is eminently a religious centre, as it 
has been from the earliest times. More than a 
century before Christ, GalHc superstition had 



214 ^^ ^^^ Shadow of the Pyrenees, 

amassed there that enormous treasure of vo- 
tive offerings which excited the cupidity of a 
Roman consul, the punishment of whose avarice 
gave rise to the phrase Aurinn Tolosanum, or 
riches which bring down the vengeance of the 
gods. 

The tenth, eleventh, and twelfth centuries, in 
which Catholic zeal was roused by the inroads 
of Manichseans, Arians, and Vaudois, furnished 
Toulouse with abundant opportunities for the 
display of its religious zeal. As early as 1020, 
the long series of butcheries and auto-da-fes 
was inaugurated by the burning of some Mani- 
chaeans. Thither in 1198, Pope Innocent the 
Third despatched Arnaud-Amaury, Abb^ of 
Citeaux, who ** concealed under the robe of a 
monk the destructive genius of a Genseric and 
an Attila," in order to offset and counteract the 
milder disposition of Count Raymond the Sixth, 
who appears to have had little taste for burning 
and butchering his subjects. A crusade was 
proclaimed by the same Pope in 1208, which 
was prosecuted under^ Simon de Montfort with 
every revolting detail of barbarity, and which 



W-^>^'vvv^ \^\\\ k 



Toulouse. 2 1 5 

laid waste the cities of Languedoc. Betrayed 
into a surrender in 12 14, under the seal of the 
most solemn oaths, the principal citizens of 
Toulouse were massacred, and on the submis- 
sion of its Count in 1229, the Inquisition was 
organized there and prosecuted with relentless 
vigor. The sixteenth century was prolific in 
atrocities. The parliament of Toulouse in 1531 
was styled ''the bloody," and was the tool of 
priestly fanaticism. The man who refused to 
lift his cap before an image, or to kneel when 
the Ave Maria bell rang, was at once pounced 
upon as a heretic. *' If any man," such was the 
edict of the parliament, ''takes pleasure in the 
ancient languages and polite learning, he is a 
heretic. Do not delay to inform against such. 
The parliament will condemn them, and the stake 
shall rid us of them." Jean de Caturce, an able 
lawyer and professor of laws in the University, 
was burned by a slow fire in 1532, because, at a 
festival on the eve of Epiphany, he gave, instead 
of the toast "the King drinks," the sentiment 
**May Christ, the true King, reign in all our 
hearts." In 1562, a fearful massacre of Hugue« 



2i6 In the Shadow of the Pyrenees, 

nots, to the number of three thousand, was per- 
petrated by the army of Blaise de Montluc, a 
brute who boasted of having executed more 
Huguenots than any other royal lieutenant, and 
who delighted in having the two hangmen who 
were his usual attendants, called his ** lackeys." 
The massacre was followed by a judicial inquiry 
which resulted in the execution of two hundred 
persons within three months. A centenary 
jubilee was instituted in commemoration of this 
event, which called forth the remonstrance of 
Voltaire against a jubilee ** to thank God for 
four thousand murders;" and in 1862, Mon- 
seigneur Desprez, Archbishop of Toulouse, gave 
notice of the recurrence of the celebration in 
these words: **The Catholic Church always 
makes it a duty to recall, in the succession of 
ages, the most remarkable events of its history 
— particularly those which belong to it in a 
special manner. It is thus that we are going to 
celebrate this year the jubilee commemorative 
of a glorious act accomplished among you three 
hundred years ago." It is gratifying to know 
that the French Government forbade the proces- 



Toulouse. 217 

sion and all out-door solemnities, and declared 
the celebration of the jubilee to be nothing less 
than *^the commemoration of a mournful and 
bloody episode of our ancient religious dis- 
cords." ' Charles the Ninth's edict of 1568, pro- 
scribing the reformed faith, banishing all Pro- 
testant ministers from France, and deposing all 
Protectant magistrates, was to Toulouse like the 
scent of blood to a hound. A crusade was 
preached, and a solemn league for the extermina- 
tion of heresy was formed in the Cathedral of 
Saint-Etienne. As may readily be supposed, 
the wave set in motion by Saint-Bartholomew 
did not spend itself without reaching Toulouse, 
and overwhelmed two or three hundred Pro- 
testant prisoners in a massacre in which the law 
students of the university figured as execu- 
tioners. 

It is not strange, therefore, if the visitor in 
Toulouse is sometimes haunted by an eerie 
sense of treading on blood-stains ; unless, as in 

^ See the admirable work of Professor Henry M. Baird, of the 
University of New York, "The Rise of the Huguenots of 
France," vol. ii., pp. 53-54. 



2i8 In the Shadow of the Pyrenees, 

my case, that impression is merged in the sense 
of treading on tenpenny nails. If the pavements 
of the city were designed to make strangers 
oblivious of its history, the design certainly 
reflects infinite credit upon the ingenuity of its 
originator. 

I had stepped into Saint-Sernin for a moment 
on the previous evening, and now proceeded at 
once to this representative church of Toulouse, 
a Romanesque structure of brick, like most of 
the buildings in the city, and impressive, alike 
from its size, its grand elliptical apse, flanked 
by five chapels, and its striking octagonal tower, 
formed by five diminishing tiers of arches sur- 
mounted with a short spire. The choir and 
transepts date from the eleventh century, the 
nave is of the twelfth, and the tower and the 
still unfinished fagade belong to the thirteenth. 
In its size and general aspect it recalled some 
of the vast churches of Bologna. 

On the southern side, directly facing the Rue 
du Taur, the Porte Miegeville opens into the 
nave. It is an exquisitely sculptured portal, the 
capitals of the columns representing the murder 



Toulouse. 219 

of the innocents — a highly appropriate sub- 
ject, by the way — the expulsion of Adam, and 
other scriptural incidents. On the same side, a 
double portal, the Fortes des Comtes, so called 
from its containing the tombs of some of the 
early Counts of Toulouse, leads into the south 
transept. 

The sacristan at once seized upon me, and 
directed me to the depository of relics, the great 
feature of the church, to which, after lingering 
awhile in the north transept and inspecting the 
tomb of Montmorency with its ghastly crucifix, 
I proceeded, and passed through a low door 
into the crypt beneath the choir, a beautiful 
piece of groined Gothic, but spoiled by tawdry 
decoration in polychrome. Over the door is in- 
scribed in Latin, Here are the gtcardians which 
protect the city ; and over the corresponding 
door on the opposite side, There is not, in all 
the World, a holier spot. I was handed over to 
a priest, who inquired if I were a Protestant, 
and who assumed an air of good-natured toler- 
ance as he led me through a collection of gilded- 
caskets, busts, shrines, bones, and other reUcs, 



2 20 In the Shadow of the Pyrenees. 

the very recollection of which is confounding. 
If a hundredth part of what was told me were 
true, I ought to have been profoundly im- 
pressed; and so I was, but I fear not in the 
way which my priestly guide could have desired. 
There was the skull of Thomas Aquinas, and 
likewise that of Saint-Barnabas, whose body (I 
tell the tale as it was told to me) was discovered 
in 488, with a copy of the Gospel of Matthew 
upon the breast. His remains having been 
conveyed to Toulouse, were hidden away in the 
interior of a column, and were re-discovered in 
the sixteenth century. Of Saint-Bartholomew 
there is a piece of skin and a part of the head ; 
there are bones of the two James, and a vulgar 
fraction of Philip. In short, Saint-Sernin claims 
to possess relics of six Apostles, a distinction 
which it owes largely to the liberality and piety 
of Charlemagne. 

But all this was as nothing to what remained. 
A section of an Apostle was a trifle ; for here 
was a shrine in which a crystal casket held a 
thorn from the sacred crown. The party who 
held the candle did not appear anxious to have 



Toulouse. 



221 



me examine too closely, and I found it impos- 
sible to determine whether the line which might 
be supposed to indicate the thorn was not one 
of the facets of the crystal. Next, a little golden 
cross. *' Here is a piece of the true cross." 
** Where?" I innocently asked. '* Oh, it is en- 
closed in this cross of gold." I muttered to 
myself Credat Judceus Apella, and passed on. 
Of the Virgin Mary there is a piece of the robe, 
besides a stone on which she laid the holy 
Child for a moment when he was born, and 
a fragment of stone from her tomb, wherever 
that m^ay be. There are relics of Peter and of 
Paul, though of what kind is not stated ; four 
bones of Saint-Suzanne of Babylon ; a jaw and 
one tooth of Saint-Christopher, etc., etc. And 
this is really the latter half of the nineteenth 
century ! 

On the rear wall of the choir are a Holy 
Family, ascribed to Correggio, and some quaint 
relievos in polished stone, said to belong to the 
time of Charlemagne, one of them the figure of 
a bishop seated, and with two fingers and the 
thumb raised in blessing. Some Sisters in 



2 22 In the Shadow of the Pyrenees, 

white bonnets filed down into the crypt, while 
I mounted the high platform behind the great 
altar, where, under an ugly baldacchino, was a 
gilded casket containing the relics of Saint-Sat- 
urnin or Sernin. This very reverend gentle- 
man, the first Bishop of Toulouse, was born, so 
says the legend, in Greece, and subsequently 
passed over into Palestine and became, succes- 
sively, a disciple of John the Baptist and of our 
Lord. He followed Peter to Antioch and Rome, 
and was sent by him to Toulouse, whence, in 
course of time, he passed into Spain, and finally 
returned to Toulouse, where he suffered martyr- 
dom by being tied to a bull and dragged to 
death. The Rue du Taur, and the Eglise du 
Taur, erected on the spot where the cord is said 
to have broken, perpetuate the memory of this 
characteristically Toulousan incident. 

Passing down into the choir, I rummaged 
about for some time among the stalls, until I 
discovered what I was in search of, on the seat 
of the first stall to the right, to wit, the figure 
of a hog seated in a kind of pulpit-chair, and 
addressing three figures, two of which wore the 



Toulouse, 223 

high Puritan hats. It is a small but piquant 
souvenir of the Toulousan sentiment respecting 
Calvinism ; and in order to prevent all possibil- 
ity of mistake, the significant memorandum is 
added: Calvin el pore pt. {prechant). 

Stopping for a moment at the Hotel TAssezat, 
ascribed to Margaret of Navarre, I went on to 
the Church of La Dalbade, of the sixteenth cen- 
tury, with its plain brick front surmounted by 
three pointed turrets, and the lunette over the 
handsome doorway filled by a colored relievo of 
the Coronation of the Virgin. The interior con- 
tains a large number of paintings, and a chapel 
modelled after the grotto at Lourdes. 

The ancient and the modern blend oddly in 
Toulouse, in this reminding one of Rouen. The 
business part of the town has a thriving air, and 
the shops are handsome ; but the city as a whole 
offers little that is homelike or cheerful. It is big, 
bare, bleak. There is a pleasant, but not re- 
markable, Jardin des Plantes, and a handsome 
public park. One comes at intervals suddenly 
upon quaint carvings, or old corbels, or elabo- 
rately sculptured doorways wedged in among 



224 In the Shadow of the Pyrejtees. 

more modern structures. At a street corner I 
noted an odd bracket with the figure of a devil. 
A narrow street of common houses is relieved 
by the florid Hotel de Pierre, which presents a 
front of light-colored stone traversed by flat, 
grooved pilasters, and loaded with carvings of 
birds, armor, flowers, human figures and faces. 
The open doorway in the centre reveals a large 
square court and two huge caryatides flanking 
the opposite door. 

A New Yorker would smile to read at the 
street-corners of an American city, ''Fox 
Street," "Bull Street," "Turkey Street," but 
here we have them : Rue des Trots RenardSy 
Rue dti TauTy Rue de Cog d Inde ; also Rue de 
la Fonderie, Rue de V Inquisition^ and Rtie des 
Filatiers. In this latter street is shown the 
house of Jean Galas, who, on a trumped-up 
charge of having murdered his eldest son to 
prevent his abjuring Calvinism, was broken 
alive upon the wheel. His murder marks the 
end of the persecutions which had harassed the 
Protestants of Southern France for a century, 
and the noble exertions of Voltaire, as is well 



Toulouse. 225 

known, procured the tardy justice of a formal 
proclamation of his innocence by the parliament 
of Paris. 

Saint-Sernin, though the largest and most note- 
worthy church, is not the cathedral. Strange to 
say, the Notre Dame of Toulouse, Saint-Etienne, 
was begun, at the end of the thirteeth century, 
by that very Raymond whose tenderness for 
the heretic Albigeois resulted in his excommu- 
nication. It faces a large square, and the front 
is wedged in between ordinary houses, above 
which it lifts its ugly square tower crowned 
with an open belfry. The great pointed arch 
of the fagade contains a superb rose-window, 
with a gallery below it ; and a peculiar, disor- 
derly effect is produced by the point of the 
ogive over the entrance being out of line with 
the centre of the rose. The church has no ar- 
chitectural unity. The earliest portion, built 
by Raymond, is the nave, the vault of which 
has a span of sixty-two feet, and which con- 
tains but two chapels, one on either side of the 
entrance. The walls are lined with pictures, 
most of them treating of the history of the first 
15 



2 26 In the Shadow of the Pyrenees. 

Christian martyr. Here, upon the proscription 
of the Protestants in 1568, the exterminators of 
heresy assembled, and prepared themselves for 
their bloody undertaking by confession and 
communion, and by a solemn oath to expose 
life and property for the maintenance of the 
faith, adopting for their motto : Eamus itoSy 
moriamur cum Christo, and attaching to their 
dress a white cross to distinguish them from 
Protestants. Thus, in the words of a modern 
historian, "the Christian protomartyr has, by an 
irony of history, been made a witness of acts 
more congenial to the spirit of his persecutors 
than to his own." ' 

The choir, begun in 1272 and erected on a 
different axis from the nave, forms a distinct 
church of the high-Gothic type, its high-altar 
overloaded with ornament, and surmounted by 
a sculptured group representing the Stoning of 
Stephen. The iron grating round the altar is 
very elaborate, and the glass of the windows is 
of the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth cen- 

^ Baird : " Rise of the Huguenots of France. " 



Toulouse, 227 

turies. An organ resting on an enormous cor- 
bel, is built high up on the wall of a short 
transept opening to the left, between the nave 
and choir. 

By the time lunch was finished the sun was 
shining in good earnest, and a stiff breeze was 
driving the clouds before it, and rustling among 
the trees of the pretty Jardin des Plantes 
through which I strolled on my way to the Ga- 
ronne, which runs between high walls of brick, 
and is spanned by the Pont Neuf, a heavy stone 
structure resting upon seven elliptical arches, 
between which large openings traverse its en- 
tire width. The fair breeze had unveiled the 
mountains, and their blue, distant heights ap- 
peared in the direction of Luchon. A signifi- 
cant hint of the erratic propensities of the river is 
given by the water-scale at one end of the Pont 
Neuf, and by the ruins of two other bridges, 
one above and the other below. From the 
huge, brick Hotel Dieu, on the left bank, starts 
an arch, which, with one pier, is all that remains 
of the bridge of Saint-Pierre, carried away by 
the inundation of 1853. Crossing the Pont 



2 28 In the Shadow of the Pyrenees, 

Neuf, with the church tower of Saint- Nicholas 
in full view, there appears, almost opposite the 
Hotel Dieu, the Chateau d'Eau, a cylindrical 
tower with a domed cupola, and an inscription 
commemorating the efforts of Charles Lagane 
to establish public fountains in the city. Wor- 
thy Lagane ! Surely it was high time for water 
instead of blood to flow in Toulouse ! From 
this side of the river a good view of the city 
is obtained, the prominent objects being the 
square tower of La Dalbade, denuded of its 
spire, and that of the Jacobins, which rises in 
tiers of angular-headed arches. Close down 
by the river is the Church of La Daurade, or 
Basilica de Maria Deaurata, the old portal of 
which was pulled down when the adjoining 
monastery was converted into a tobacco fac- 
tory, and has been re-erected in the Museum. 

On this Jacobin tower as a landmark I fast- 
ened my eyes, and, recrossing the bridge, be- 
gan to work my way toward it, past the dismal 
Morgue in the river-wall just below the semi- 
circular apse of the transept of La Daurade ; 
but the Church of the Jacobins seemed to have 



Toulouse. 229 

a strange faculty of hiding itself, and evaded 
discovery in the most exasperating manner. 
Threading one narrow, gloomy street after an- 
other, I stumbled at last upon a .carved door- 
way opening into a square court, and enter- 
ing, saw over the doorway a gallery with three 
elegant arches, but degraded into a woodshed, 
besides the traces of fine carvings in other 
parts of the court. I found I was in the Lycee, 
which contains the public library, consisting in 
great part of works pertaining to the Jesuits. 
Here, too, I was close by the object of my 
search, for the building really formed a part of 
the once vast establishment of Les Jacobins. 
The church, which I reached at length through 
a yard, repaid the trouble I had taken to find 
it. The high side-walls rise in great arches 
of brick separated by buttresses; within, the 
grand nave is divided down the centre by a 
single row of cylindrical columns, on which 
rests the Gothic ceiling with its oddly-colored 
arches. The church has been long dismantled, 
and was at one time used for a barrack ; but two 
sides still remain of what must have been one 



230 In the Shadow of the Pyrenees. 

of the most charming of cloisters, the arcades 
of which are formed by small, pointed arches, 
supported by slender and graceful columns of 
stone. 

The pavements of Toulouse had done their 
work so effectually that I was tempted to give 
the go-by to the Museum ; but the polite shop- 
woman who sold me some photographs pointed 
out the entrance close by, and on pulling the 
bell-rope I was admitted into the dismantled 
Church of the Augustinians, of which the anti- 
quarians have taken possession. It is not the 
first instance in which a church has become a 
depository of antiques, and in this case, at least, 
the arrangement was felicitous. A large hall 
had been converted into a picture-gallery which 
contained little that was interesting. There was 
a wretched Saint-Diego, laid to Murillo, and 
a shocking Crucifixion, by Rubens, besides a 
powerful though revolting picture, by Benjamin 
Constant — Mohammed the Second entering 
Constantinople. The larger cloister of the 
church presents one of the prettiest pictures 
imaginable. The four sides are bordered with 



Toulouse, 231 

charming arcades, each consisting of twenty 
little ogive arches resting on slender double- 
columns ; and under these, as well as in the 
open square which they surround, is arranged 
a large collection of mural tablets, tombstones, 
marbles with Roman inscriptions, several of 
them bearing the name of CN. POMPEIUS ; stone 
sarcophagi, and some stone figures, among 
which I noted especially two very ugly dogs or 
wolves sitting upright on their haunches. In 
the centre of the square a fountain had been 
constructed out of what was, apparently, an old 
altar, supported on columns and sculptured 
with two full-length figures in ecclesiastical cos- 
tume. 

The smaller cloister is not used for the dis- 
play of antiquities, and in its way is equally a 
little gem with the other. The square space is 
formed by the surrounding buildings, the lower 
story of which forms an arcade with three large 
elliptic arches on each side, the walls over the 
arches displaying groups of figures in relief, 
and masses of climbing vines ; while a fountain 
in the centre, surmounted by a female figure in 



232 In the Shadow of the Pyrenees, 

marble, reveals the gold-fish through the trans- 
parent water in its basin. 

Thoroughly tired, I plodded back toward the 
hotel through the Place du Capitole, the princi- 
pal square of the city, and bounded on one side 
by the Capitol, a long and not particularly im- 
pressive structure, with an Ionic fagade adorned 
with eight red-marble columns. Passing through 
the Rue du Taur, I stopped for a moment at 
the Eglise du Taur. It was too dark to obtain 
a very distinct impression of the interior, but I 
could see the large fresco over the altar, which 
represented Saint-Sernin tied to a very for- 
midable bull. Most welcome was the cosy, 
quiet dining-room of the Europe. I strolled 
awhile through the streets among the brilliantly 
lighted shops, and round the Ronde Napoleon 
in front of the hotel, and looking up, saw in the 
twinkling stars a good augury of a fair day for 
Carcassonne. 



Ca re as Sonne, 233 



CHAPTER XVII. 

CARCASSONNE. 

"How old I am ! I'm eighty years ! 

I've worked both hard and long. 

Yet patient as my life has been, 

One dearest sight I have not seen — 

It almost seems a wrong ; 

A dream I had when life was new, 

Alas, our dreams ! they come not true ; 

I thought to see fair Carcassonne 

That lovely city — Carcassonne ! " 
— Gust AVE Nadaud : translated by M. E. W. Sherwood. 

I HARDLY know what it was that had made 
me for so many years a sharer in the old 
peasant's simple wish to see Carcassonne, but 
I am sure the desire had been deepened by that 
exquisite little poem of Gustave Nadaud ; at 
any rate, the words had been running all night 
in my brain ; and when, through the parted cur- 
tain, I saw ** shadow streaks of rain " crossing 
the gray morning haze, the verses took on the 
character of a prophecy — 

*'I could not go to Carcassonne, 
I never went to Carcassonne. " 



234 ^^ ^-^^ Shadow of the Pyrenees. 

Shall I not give it up and seek fairer skies in 
the North ? And yet it is only two hours away ! 
And so, laboring through coffee and rolls in 
that peculiar mental state in which a man, while 
debating a question with the upper half of his 
mind, is all the while dimly conscious of yield- 
ing to a decided current in the lower half, I 
somehow found the question settled by being 
at the station with my ticket for Carcassonne 
in my hand. 

It was a lonely ride of two hours; the rain 
falling in an undecided kind of way, and the 
clouds persistently menacing. The route of- 
fered little of interest beyond the general pic- 
turesqueness of the old towns. The architec- 
ture of the village churches presented constant 
repetitions of the peculiarity I had observed in 
the Eglise du Taur ; the front being carried up 
to a great height above the roof, and pierced 
near the top with openings for bells. The abun- 
dance of windmills would have kept the warlike 
ardor of Don Quixote at its highest pitch. 

As the train approached Carcassonne, I looked 
eagerly out on both sides of the carriage for a 



Carcassonne, 235 

view of the ancient city, but in vain ; for the 
road ran between embankments to the very sta- 
tion. I sat down to breakfast in the waiting- 
room, and they brought me tripe, which I de- 
test, and a cutlet, which was a choice of evils, 
while an elderly boor opposite my seat drew 
forth and kindled his stinking pipe with a sub- 
lime indifference to the stomachs of his neigh- 
bors ; so that, on the whole, the breakfast quite 
eclipsed the one at Montrejeau, except that 
there was plenty of time, 

A spiteful little rain was driving against my 
umbrella as I left the back door of the station, 
and crossing the Canal du Midi, entered upon a 
boulevard shaded with noble trees, and termina- 
ting in a little park, which contained two foun- 
tains, a column of red marble, and a variety of 
flowers. Plunging, hap-hazard, down the first 
street which opened into the city, I came upon 
the Church of Saint- Vincent, where, as in duty 
bound, I stopped for a moment to pay my re- 
spects, not to my sainted namesake, but to the 
beautiful stained glass of his church, and then, 
pursuing my way blindly among the streets, I 



236 In the Shadow of the Pyrenees. 

caught at last a glimpse of a black wall and a 
line of turrets across the river, and having thus 
obtained my bearings, was soon clear of the city 
and crossing the Aude by the Pont Vieux, with 
old Carcassonne in full view. 

I know of no place of which it is more difficult 
to give a reader a correct idea by mere descrip- 
tion. I think there can hardly be another view 
in Europe like that which it presents. The 
nearest approach to it that I have seen is the 
view of Avignon, with the Palace of the Popes 
and the huge fortress of Saint-Andre on the 
height across the Rhone ; but there is a weird, 
barbaric quality in the view of Carcassonne 
which is wanting in the other. A long ridge rises 
from the valley of the Aude, crowned with an 
irregular line of battlements, from every part of 
which shoot up, apparently at random, square 
or cylindrical towers of different heights, with 
pointed or truncated summits like a group of 
spouting geysers suddenly turned to stone. 
From the Pont Vieux one is looking, not only 
across the Aude, but over a gap of thirteen 
centuries. Behind, within five minutes' walk, 



Carcassonne. 237 

are a railroad, and telegraphs, reading-rooms, 
newspapers, libraries, steam-mills, stove-pipe 
hats and cutaways. In front is a walled city of 
the fifth century, built for defence against man- 
gonels, catapults, cross-bows, and scaling-lad- 
ders, where it would excite no surprise to see 
a mailed figure in helmet and greaves patrolling 
the battlements. To me the impression was the 
more vivid, after having lived for weeks within 
the defences of Bayonne, in daily sight of Vau- 
ban's mathematically sloped walls, trim glacis, 
and symmetrical bastions. Under the lowering 
sky and through the streaks of the driving rain, 
the aspect was not only strange but savage. 
However, as one moves up the western slope 
toward the Porte de I'Aude, he is diverted from 
historic reminiscences and romantic musings by 
the necessity of taking heed to his steps ; since 
the Carcassonians appear to have retained the 
barbaric contempt for decency, and the well- 
paved road and the corners of the walls are 
defiled in a manner which at once forbids and 
beggars description. 

If I am to render this chapter at all inteUigible, 



238 In the Shadow of the Pyrenees. 

I must tax the reader's patience with a little his- 
tory, without which Carcassonne is a riddle in 
stone. Here are two towns bearing the same 
name, the one on a salubrious height, command- 
ing a noble prospect, the other in a river-valley ; 
yet the town on the higher and finer site is but 
an ancient ruin, containing within its walls only 
about fourteen hundred people of the poorer 
class, often living, if reports are to be credited, 
like swine ; while something like twenty-six 
thousand swarm in the busy city across the 
Aude. No villas crown the height. It is given 
up to desolation, silence, and poverty. 

Carcassonne, the old city I mean, occupies the 
site of Carcaso, an ancient city of Southern 
Gaul belonging to the Volcae Tectosages, a 
Celtic tribe of Asia Minor. It makes almost no 
appearance in Roman history ; is known to have 
been taken by the Franks in the fourth century 
and to have been quickly retaken by the Ro- 
mans, and first comes distinctly into view in 436 
A.D., when Theodoric, the king of the Visigoths, 
took possession of it, and held it with all the 
adjacent territory. 



Ca 7' c as Sonne, 239 

The principal fact which the visitor is to keep 
in mind is that, in the walls and towers of this 
city, he has before him a complete course of the 
art of fortification from the fifth to the fourteenth 
century : the enceinte consisting of a double line 
of works, the inner one being the old Visigothic 
fort of the fifth century, while the outer repre- 
sents a stage eight or nine centuries later. The 
two have a general resemblance in being alike 
earlier than the age of artillery, and therefore 
designed for defence against the same kind of 
weapons and the same methods of assault. The 
line of the Visigothic works, which is easily fol- 
lowed, formed an oval with a slight depression 
on the western face, following the configuration 
of the plateau upon which it was built. Most of 
the Visigothic towers were erected upon Roman 
foundations, readily distinguished by their huge 
square blocks from the closer masonry of the 
superstructures, which rise in courses of small, 
rough stones alternating with narrow bands of 
large bricks. The Visigoths appreciated the 
importance of the site, commanding as it did 
the valley of the Aude, which formed the natural 



240 l7i the Shadow of the Pyrenees. 

route from Narbonne to Toulouse, and the en- 
trance of the defiles leading into Spain. 

The Visigothic kingdom came to an end in 
the eighth century, and gave place to the Moors 
of Spain, and again Carcassonne disappears 
from history for four centuries. No traces are 
to be found of constructions between the Visi- 
gothic period and the end of the eleventh 
century, when Pope Urban the Second appears 
at Carcassonne to appease some local disturb- 
ance, and gives his blessing to the Church of 
Saint-Nazaire and to the materials prepared to 
complete it. 

Bernard Aton was viscount of the city at this 
time, and the unruliness of his vassals at last 
compelled him to call to his assistance the neigh- 
boring Count of Toulouse, with whose aid he 
reduced them to subjection. The goods of the 
leading rebels were confiscated in the interest of 
a few vassals who had remained faithful, and 
to whom were given in fief the towers and 
houses of the city, on condition of their guarding 
them and residing there with their families dur- 
ing the months of their service. The chateau, 



Carcassonne, 241 

which forms one of the two great masses rising 
above the western front — the Church of Saint- 
Nazaire being the other — was built near the 
Porte de I'Aude about 11 30. 

In 1209, Carcassonne, owing to the presence 
of the Albigeois, incurred the taint of heresy ; 
and upon the proclamation of the anti-heretic 
crusade by Pope Innocent the Third, was be- 
sieged by the papal armies under the notori- 
ous Simon de Montfort, and surrendered after 
a siege of fourteen days. 

The place was united to the French crown 
under Louis the Ninth, or Saint-Louis, in 1239 ; 
from which period a new and important stage 
of its history begins. The young viscount Ray- 
mond de Trincavel, who, at the age of two 
years, had been placed in the hands of the 
Comte de Foix, suddenly appeared before the 
gates with a body of Catalonian and Aragonese 
troops. His forces invested the city on the sev- 
enteenth of September, 1240, and took posses- 
sion of the suburb or faubourg of Graveillant, 
probably on the west side of the city, facing 

the Porte de I'Aude. This point, however, was 
16 



242 In the Shadow of the Pyrenees. 

immediately retaken, and after twenty-four days 
Trincavel was compelled to raise the siege. 
Meanwhile, some days before the actual invest- 
ment, an attempt had been made by the inhabi- 
tants of Trivalle, another faubourg on the east- 
ern side, to aid the army of the besiegers ; and 
on the night of the ninth of September, the 
gates had been opened to the forces of Trinca- 
vel, who, from this point, had directed his 
attack against the Narbonne gate. As soon as 
the siege was raised, Louis, partly to punish the 
treachery of the suburbans, and partly to pre- 
vent the reoccupation of points so dangerous to 
the city, compelled the inhabitants of Trivalle 
to evacuate it, and forbade those of Graveillant 
to rebuild that faubourg. At the same time he 
began a series of elaborate works in order to 
strengthen the defences of the city. He re- 
moved the ruins of the faubourgs, cleared the 
entire ground between the city and the Pont 
Vieux, and erected that whole line of defences 
which is still to be seen outside the Visigothic 
walls. 

Being resolved to make Carcassonne the bul- 



Carcassonne. 243 

wark- of his kingdom against the heretic lords 
of the southern provinces, Louis persisted in 
his refusal to allow Trivalle and Graveillant to 
be rebuilt ; but, after a seven years' exile of the 
inhabitants, he at length consented, at the in- 
stance of Bishop Radulph, to allow them to 
establish themselves on the opposite side of 
the Aude, restoring to them their possessions 
before the war, and requiring them to build, 
at their own expense, the churches of Notre 
Dame and Les Freres Mineurs, which they had 
demolished. The royal letters-patent to this 
effect, issued on the fourth of April, 1247, 
mark the date of the foundation of the modern 
city. 

The defences erected by Louis the Ninth 
were further strengthened by Philip the Bold. 
The Porte Narbonnaise and the Tour duTr^sau 
with the adjoining curtains,^ belong to this 
period. Philip also rebuilt the tower of the In- 
quisition, the Bishop's Tower, and the towers 
Cahusac, Mipadre, du MouHn, and Saint-Na- 

* A curtain is the wall which joins two towers. 



244 ^^ ^^^ Shadow of the Pyrenees, 

Zaire, in such a way as better to command the 
valley of the Aude and the southern extremity 
of the plateau. The outer enciente, that of 
Louis the Ninth, is built with irregular masses 
of sandstone with plain facings ; while the 
stones of the later constructions are chiselled at 
the edges, and decorated with embossments. 
The towers of the interior line repaired by 
Philip are alike in profile; but all his work is 
more elaborate, while the whole aspect of the 
outer enclosure, with its loop-holes, gates, and 
corbels, is more simple and broad. 

Since that time no new works have been un- 
dertaken ; and during the Middle Ages the for- 
tress was regarded as impregnable ; though. In 
fact, it was not assailed, and only opened its 
gates in 1355 to Edward the Black Prince, when 
the whole of Languedoc was subjugated by 
him. 

These outlines of history will assist the reader 
to understand the ensuing references, which 
must be confined to a few prominent features 
of the city. A description in full detail would 
be at once useless and wearisome, and besides, 




2. Porte Narboiinaise. 

3. Tour du Tresor. 

4. Le Chateau. 

5. Barbican, 

6. Well. 

7. Tour de la Justice. 

8. Tour Visigothe. 

9. Tour de I'Jnquisition. 

0. Tour de T^vequc. 

1. Church of S. Nazaire. 

2. Well. 



GENERAL PLAN OF CARCASSONNE, by Viollet le Due. 



Carcassonne, 245 

would be impossible without numerous draw- 
ings/ 

There is no place where a student of history- 
could gain, in the same amount of time, so 
complete and vivid a conception of the art of 
warfare as it was conducted before the inven- 
tion of artillery. To quote the words of M. Le 
Due: *' In examining carefully and in detail 
the defensive works of these times, one un- 
derstands those stories of tremendous assaults 
which we are too prone to charge with exag- 
geration. Before defences so well planned and 
so ingeniously combined, we have no difficulty 
in picturing the enormous appliances of the 
besiegers — the movable towers, the barricades 
and terraced bastilles, the sapping-machines on 
wheels, the mining operations which required 
time when powder and cannon were not in use. 
A well-organized and provisioned garrison could 



^ The reader who is curious about these details, will find all 
that is known on the subject in the admirable and exhaustive 
treatise of M. Viollet le Due, "La Cite de Carcassonne," to 
which I am indebted for a large part of the material of this 
chapter. See the accompanying plan. 



246 In the Shadow of the Pyrenees, 

prolong a siege indefinitely ; so that it was not 
a rare thing for a petty town to resist a numer- 
ous army for months." Here one has before 
his eyes a scale of the progress made in the 
art of fortification during eleven centuries. 
Here he can patrol the Chemin de Ronde, the 
stone platform within, and just below the sum- 
mit of the walls, and look down through the 
great openings for hurling stones or pouring 
boiling oil on the heads of the besiegers. Now 
his walk is interrupted by a tower, and a door 
must be unbarred and a flight of steps scaled 
before he can continue his round, while some- 
times the narrow stone pathway follows the outer 
circuit of the tower. Here and there he comes 
upon carefully masked sally-ports furnishing 
communication between different parts of the 
fortress ; now the doors of the towers are un- 
locked, and he descends by ladders to gloomy 
dungeons at the foundations, w^here the light 
comes feebly through narrow loop-holes ; and 
now climbs to the upper stories, where the great 
shutters on their wooden axes show how the 
besieged could shoot their arrows downward 



Carcassonne, 247 

without exposure to the shafts of the assailants 
below. 

The interiors of the towers, in their present 
state, present little variation. The ancient mode 
of communication between the different stories 
was by ladders which could be drawn up after 
mounting ; so that one is constantly confronted, 
on entering a tower, with a yawning well, open- 
ing clear to the foundation, and protected only 
by a partial covering of loose planks. 

Let us go round to the eastern side, the side 
farthest from the modern city, and face the prin- 
cipal entrance, the only one now accessible for 
carriages — the Porte Narbonnaise. Two enor- 
mous towers, with pointed roofs, circular in front 
and flat on the side toward the city, are con- 
nected by a wall, also crowned with a peaked 
roof, and built up to the full height of the tow- 
ers. In the centre of this wall is the Narbonne 
Gate, above which appears in a niche the de- 
faced figure of Carcas, a Saracen woman who, 
according to the legend, alone remained in the 
city after a siege of five years by Charlemagne. 
The versions of the legend differ. One is to the 



248 In the Shadow of the Pyrenees, 

effect that she capitulated and presented the 
keys of the city to Charlemagne ; another, that 
Charlemagne was about to raise the siege in 
despair, when a tower on the western side gave 
way and opened a breach for his troops. 

On carefully examining this structure we shall 
conclude that an entrance could have been no 
easy task for a body of assailants. Here was a 
ditch to be crossed before the gate was reached, 
and of course the bridge would be raised. Sup- 
posing the party, however, to have found means 
to cross the ditch, they must pass a barbican, 
from each loop-hole of which poured a stream 
of arrows, which would follow them the whole 
length of the oblique path to the gate. 

Having reached at length the foot of the tow- 
ers, probably with the loss of some men, the 
real difficulties of the party would now begin. 
The entrance was first crossed by a chain, the 
sockets of which are still to be seen. Then 
came a portcullis, raised and lowered by pul- 
leys ; but at this point the machicoulis y a long 
opening above the gate, would greet the un- 
welcome visitors with a ton or more of stone, or 



Carcassonne. 249 

with a deluge of hot oil from its ** ponderous and 
marble jaws." If the first portcullis were carried 
and the party passed in under the vaulting of 
the gateway, the salute would be repeated from 
a similar opening in the vault ; and if their de- 
termined bravery carried them through all these 
obstacles to the second portcullis, opening into 
the city, a third machicoulis discharged another 
shower of stones. 

One might think all this sufficiently discour- 
aging, but not so the defenders of Carcassonne. 
Above the arch of the gate, and on each side of 
the niche occupied by Dame Carcas, may be 
seen three carefully cut openings in the walls of 
the towers, one of them bevelled so as to receive 
an inclined beam. A scout, lurking under the 
walls before an assault, might have seen a stout 
beam projecting from one of these holes, and 
astride it a carpenter driving into the mortice 
on its lower side the end of the oblique brace 
rising to meet it from the bevelled opening be- 
low. On these beams were laid planks, and 
thus a platform was constructed, projecting 
above the gate and protecting the soldiers on 



250 In the Shadow of the Pyrenees. 

guard. Other beams above carried the planks 
of a roof. The summits of the towers were also 
furnished with similar timber structures, project- 
ing so as to allow the besieged to command with 
their arrows and other missiles the foundations 
which could not be seen from the loopholes, 
and thus to embarrass the operations of sappers 
or scaling-parties. The square holes for beams 
are still visible everyw^here along the surface of 
the walls and towers ; and it was, of course, the 
object of the besiegers to set these timber-nests 
on fire, or to demolish them with stones or huge 
bolts launched by catapults. Other and larger 
square apertures opened through the battlements 
at equal intervals at the level of the chemin de 
roiide. In the upper stages of the towers the 
windows were protected by great shutters mov- 
ing on wooden axes, which permitted the archer 
to discharge his arrows downward without ex- 
posure, and, at the same time, protected the 
interior from the wind and rain. 

I found the custodian, after some inquiry, 
taking his breakfast standing at the sideboard 
in his little tavern, while his wife sat at the ta- 



Carcassonne. 251 

ble. The worthy couple received me with sim- 
ple and charming courtesy, and invited me to a 
seat ; and the good man, having finished his 
repast and armed himself with his bunch of 
keys, conducted me first to the chateau, and 
thence along the western front and a part of the 
southern extremity, up flights of steps and 
down ladders, expounding with great fluency, 
and, I must needs say, in a most clear and in- 
teresting manner. 

The towers of both the lines of defence habit- 
ually break the course of the chemin de rondey 
so that if any assailant succeeded in gaining 
the curtain, he found himself hemmed in be- 
tween two towers. Every tower thus formed a 
separate redoubt, which must be forced in its 
turn. 

To the north of the Porte Narbonnaise rises 
the Treasury Tower, a superb work of the 
same height and date with the towers of the 
gate, commanding the city and the eastern 
plain. It contains four stories, the first below 
the level of the city, the second on the level. 
The third story contains a little chamber for the 



252 In the Shadow of the Pyrenees. 

commanding officer. This story and the one be- 
low are pierced with loop-holes, opening under 
large arcades furnished with stone benches. 

From this tower northward the Visigothic 
enclosure shows the effects of a terrible siege. 
The engines of the assailants must have been 
very effectiveto up turn such huge fragments of 
the wall, and to throw from the perpendicular 
towers of which the interiors present only solid 
masses of masonry. It would seem as though 
nothing but cannon could have produced such 
effects ; and yet the siege in which a great part 
of these ramparts was overthrown was before 
the twelfth century ; since upon the debris are 
erected structures identical with those of the 
thirteenth century. Little pains seems to have 
been taken to clear away the ruins, for enor- 
mous pieces of wall may be seen enclosed in 
the restored curtains, presenting to the eye the 
beds of their courses of rubble or brick, which 
neither time nor violence has succeeded in dis- 
jointing, and which furnish foundations firm as 
rock for the new walls. 

On the western side of the fortifications, over- 



Carcassonne, 253 

looking the modern city, is the Porte de I'Aude, 
or Porte de Toulouse, a work of the twelfth 
century. This gate was formerly covered by a 
circular outwork, which has been destroyed and 
its materials used to build a mill. The sloping, 
zigzag path leading up to the entrance is com- 
manded by battlements and a traverse rising 
to the level of the chemin de ronde, and these, 
in turn, are overlooked by the Tour de la Jus- 
tice, and the Tour Visigothe. The assailant 
here found himself in a trap, commanded on all 
sides by formidable works, and where he was 
obliged to make a sharp turn in order to reach 
the gate. Next to the Tour Visigothe is the 
Tour de ITnquisition, to the bottom of which I 
descended by a ladder, and landed in a gloomy 
chamber with a stone pillar in the centre, gar- 
nished with chains. Next comes the Bishop's 
Tower, which bestrides both enclosures so as 
to cut off, if necessary, all communication be- 
tween the northern and southern portions of the 
lices or spaces between the inner and outer 
walls. The tower spans the space on two 
arches defended by three machicoulis. The 



254 ^^ ^^^ Shadow of the Pyrenees. 

Bishop's Palace which once adjoined it is com- 
pletely destroyed, but the foundations of the 
cloister of the neighboring Church of Saint- 
Nazaire have been discovered ; and these, to- 
gether with one wall of the cloister preserved 
with the columns and the ribs of the vaultings, 
correspond with the old plans of the city in 
which the cloister and its outbuildings are laid 
down. From the cloister, steps give access to 
the ramparts ; but the cloister and the Bishop's 
Palace were enclosed in an enceinte of their 
own, so that the curtains could not be reached 
from the street. 

There are in all, thirty-eight towers, fourteen 
along the exterior enclosure, and twenty-four 
along the Visigothic line. Farther detail would 
be interesting only to antiquarians, and I fear 
that even this very imperfect sketch has taxed 
the reader's patience. Having then reached the 
ecclesiastical portion of the town, let us devote 
a little time to Saint-Nazaire. 
I The church presents the end of its nave to 
the western slope of the plateau which it over- 
looks, in a plain front with a belfry on one cor- 



Carcassonne. 255 

ner, and a square tower in the centre contain- 
ing four arched windows near the top, and three 
small circular ones lower down. The belfry is 
connected with the central tower by a little en- 
closed bridge carried over on an arch with pic- 
turesque effect. To the east the church presents 
its transepts and apsis, pierced with beautiful, 
high, pointed windows. The nave belongs to 
the end of the eleventh or the beginning of the 
twelfth century, and the transepts and apse date 
from the beginning of the fourteenth, the latter 
being, without doubt, erected upon Roman 
foundations. The church is small, but the in- 
terior is one of the most exquisite architectural 
gems in Europe. The Roman nave, as in many 
of the churches of Provence and lower Langue- 
doc, presents a central vault in bays, with 
ribbed arches, and buttressed by the vaults 
covering the very narrow side-aisles, which are 
lighted by windows in the side-walls. The piers 
supporting the arches of the central vault are 
alternately round and ^square. The side-aisles, 
and the openings into them from the nave, are 
constructed with round arches ; but the diffi- 



256 In the Shadow of the Pyrenees, 

culty of the nave evidently compelled the intro- 
duction of the pointed arch there. The reason 
for placing the entrance-door in the north aisle, 
lay in the requirements of the church militant ; 
since the western fagade adjoined the ramparts 
and contributed to their defence. 

Toward 1260 there was added, on the south- 
ern flank, a chapel, the floor of which is on a 
level with the pavement of the ancient cloister. 
Here is the tomb of the Bishop Radulph, 
through whose intercession, it will be remem- 
bered, the exiled inhabitants of the two suburbs 
of Carcassonne were allowed to settle on the far- 
ther side of the Aude ; and who is thus, in a 
sense, the founder of the modern city. A full- 
length figure of the Bishop surmounts a sarco- 
phagus on which is carved a series of small fig- 
ures, representing the canons of the cathedral 
dressed for the service of the choir. 

The effect of the choir and transepts ap- 
proached from the nave is exceedingly rich and 
striking. Three chapels open upon each arm 
of the transept, separated from each other by 
lattices supported by blank eUiptical arches. 



Carcassonne. 257 

Saint-Nazaire is an exception to the churches of 
Narbonne in the prodigality of its ornament. 
The glass of the transept and choir is magnifi. 
cent ; the windows are so large and so numer- 
ous that the transept and apse resemble a great 
and richly colored lantern. The glass is of the 
fourteenth century. One of the most beautiful 
of the windows represents Christ on the Cross, 
the temptation of Adam, and some prophets 
holding scrolls inscribed with predictions of the 
advent and death of our Lord. The centres of 
the beautiful rose-windows are modern, but the 
other parts are of the same date with the larger 
windows. In the north transept is the tomb of 
Bishop Pierre de Rochefort, and on one side 
of the high altar appears a red-marble slab, 
which is said to mark the first tomb of Simon 
de Montfort, the hero of the crusades against 
the Albigeois ; though M. Viollet le Due, un- 
der whose superintendence the church has been 
thoroughly restored, questions the genuineness 
of this monument. The same hero is com- 
memorated in a very curious relievo in the wall 
of one of the chapels, representing the assault 



258 In the Shadow of the Pyrenees, 

of a fortified town, where the besieged are 
bringing a mangonel to bear upon the assailants. 
It is-supposed to represent the death of Simon 
de Montfort, who was killed before the walls of 
Toulouse by a stone from an engine handled by- 
some women. Some angels are seen bearing a 
soul above the scene of battle into the sky. 

The kindly old dame who acted as cicerone, 
having lighted her candle by the aid of my 
match-box, preceded me into the crypt, which 
dates from the eleventh century, and was dis- 
covered by Le Due in 1857, under the sanctuary. 
Its vaulting had been destroyed in preparing 
the foundations of the choir and transepts. 
This was replaced by a stone ceiling, and one 
may now see the original piers, and the walls 
with their little bays. The old lady pointed out 
against one of the walls a mass of stone which 
she said was an altar of the ninth century. I 
could have replied with Mr. Snagsby's com- 
ment on Tulkinghorn's port, '* It might be — 
any age almost." 

It goes without saying that the possessors of 
such a stronghold as this city, liable to be 



Carcassonne, 259 

closely invested for months at a time, would 
give special attention to the water supply ; so 
that we must not leave Carcassonne without a 
word about the wells. There is one in the 
centre of the town, covered with a large, round, 
stuccoed building. I passed another on the 
way to this. Still another is in the cloister of 
Saint-Nazaire, besides which wells have been 
discovered in some of the towers. Le Due 
found a cistern under the ascent to the Porte 
de I'Aude and between the two enclosures. 
A stairway built in the thickness of the first 
enclosure leads down into it, and the water 
could be drawn from a curbed opening still 
visible in the wall. 

That this remarkable historic city can now be 
visited and its interesting monuments examined 
with safety and comfort, is due to the Commis- 
sion des Monuments HistoriqueSy which under- 
took the work of restoration and preservation 
in 1844. At that time all the towers of the 
Visigothic enclosure had been uncovered for 
years, and had suffered the usual effects of ex- 
posure to the weather. The ruins had been 



26o In the Shadow of the Pyrenees, 

abandoned to the inhabitants, who used the 
materials of the parapets and chemins de ronde 
at pleasure, and converted the towers into de- 
positories of filth. Since 1855 the Commission 
has been engaged in covering the towers, and 
in restoring the most interesting parts of the 
walls and the Church of Saint-Nazaire. Most 
of the towers of the inner enclosure are now 
covered, and ruined portions of the walls, espe- 
cially on the west side, have been rebuilt ; so 
that for years yet to come these venerable walls 
and towers, scarred and blackened with the 
storms of fourteen centuries, will remain, a les- 
son-book in stone for the student of history. 

My explorations ended, I returned to the 
Porte Narbonnaise, through which the wind 
swept with a fury which nearly carried away 
my umbrella ; and following the path along the 
eastern front and round the northern end, I 
made my way down to the modern city and 
into the nineteenth century again. 

It is a change for the better, spite of the fas- 
cinating, romantic charm which invests the an- 
cient towers and bulwarks. No thoughtful man 



Ca rcassonne. 261 

can go from this quaint relic of barbarism and 
feudalism into even a little provincial city like 
modern Carcassonne, and not realize the im- 
mense gulf which separates the new civilization 
from the old. Though the nations have not yet 
unlearned the art of war, and human progress, 
alas, marks its advance by deadHer instruments 
of destruction, yet the moral and intellectual 
plane is higher, '' the gray barbarian " is '* lower 
than the Christian child." 

As I stroll beneath the grand trees of the 
modern city, awaiting the train for Toulouse, I 
am tempted to give the reader the whole of the 
little poem of Nadaud, with a verse from which 
this closing chapter is prefaced. The picture is 
so true to nature ; such a happy illustration of 
the different keys in which human desires are 
set ; the story is so sweetly and simply told, 
that it is pleasant to associate it with the memo- 
ries of Carcassonne. 

**How old I am! I'm eighty years! 
I've worked both hard and long. 
Yet, patient as my life has been, 
One dearest sight I have not seen — 



262 In the Shadow of the Pyrenees, 

It almost seems a wrong ; 
A dream I had when life was new, 
Alas, our dreams ! they come not true ; 
I thought to see fair Carcassonne, 
That lovely city — Carcassonne ! 

One sees it dimly from the height 
Beyond the mountains blue, 
Fain would I walk five weary leagues — 
I do not mind the road's fatigues — 
Through morn and evening's dew. 
But bitter frosts would fall at night. 
And on the grapes that yellow blight ! 
I could not go to Carcassonne, 
I never went to Carcassonne. 

They say it is as gay all times 

As holidays at home ! 

The gentles ride in gay attire, 

And in the sun each gilded spire 

Shoots up, like those of Rome I 

The Bishop the procession leads. 

And generals curb their prancing steeds, 

Alas ! I know not Carcassonne I 

Alas \ I saw not Carcassonne ! 

Our vicar's right ! he preaches loud, 
And bids us to beware; 
He says, * O ! guard the weakest part, 
And most the traitor in the heart 



Carcassonne, 263 

Against ambition's snare !'* 
Perhaps in Autumn I can find 
Two sunny days with gentle wind; 
I then could go to Carcassonne, 
I still could go to Carcassonne ! 

My God and Father ! pardon me 

If this my wish offends ! 

One sees some hope, more high than he, 

In age, as in his infancy. 

To which his heart ascends ! 

My wife, my son have seen Narbonne; 

My grandson went to Perpignan ; 

But I have not seen Carcassonne ! 

But I have not seen Carcassonne ! 

Thus sighed a peasant bent with age, 

Half dreaming in his chair; 

I said, ' My friend, come go with me. 

To-morrow then thine eyes shall see 

Those streets that seem so fair.' 

That night there came for passing soul 

The church-bell's low and solemn toll. 

He never saw gay Carcassonne. 

Who has not known a Carcassonne?" 

The train has come. Toulouse to-night. To- 
morrow we pass out of the shadow of the 
Pyrenees. 



NOTES. 



CHAPTER I. 

(i) Les Landes, page i. For a minute and most in- 
teresting description of this remarkable region, its phy- 
sical characteristics, people, and customs, the reader is 
referred to M. Joanne's De Bordeaux a Bayonne. 

CHAPTER VII. 

(i) Page 75. The celebrated Song of Lelo, the manu- 
script of which was discovered at Simancas near the 
close of the sixteenth century, is said to be founded on 
the wars of the Roman Emperor Augustus with the Can- 
tabri, and is claimed by some writers to be almost con- 
temporaneous with the events it relates. The following 
is rendered from the French version of M. Capistou : 

Lelo is dead ! Lelo is dead ! Zara hath slain him. 

The Romans would conquer Biscay, and Biscay raised the song 

of war. 
Octavius is lord of the world, and Lekobidi is lord of Biscay. 
From the side of the sea and from the side of the land, Octavius 

attacks us with his warriors. 
They hold the plains, but the caverns and the mountams are ours. 



266 Notes. 

When we are in a favorable position we defend it with courage. 
We fear not to meet them on equal terms, even though we lack 

necessary food. 
They ga covered with hard cuirasses, but, notwithstanding, we 

hit them with our lances. 
Five years of war, day and night, without the least repose, have 

we undergone. 
For one of our men who falls, fifty of their's have been destroyed. 
They are many, and we very few. In the end, a treaty gives 

peace to us all. 
In our mountains, as in their country, we are all friends. 

The Reverend Wentworth Webster, M.A., in his 
Basque Legends (London, 1879), gives a more Hteral ren- 
dering and says : '' Many of the words are still very ob- 
scure, and the translation of them is almost guess-work," 
He gives it as one of the oldest curiosities of Basque 
verse, but does not admit the early date claimed for it. 

(2) Page 78. '^ There can be no doubt but that the 
battle was fought much nearer to Poitiers than to Tours." 
— Hallam, Middle Ages, vol. i., p. 7. 

(3) Page 79. The following translation of the Song 
of Altabizcar is from Mr. Webster's Basque Legends: 

A cry is heard 

From the Basque mountain's midst. 

Etcheco Jauna,! at his door erect. 

Listens, and cries, '' What want they ? Who goes there ? " 

At his lord's feet the dog that sleeping lay 

Starts up, his bark fills Altabizcar round. 

^ " The master of the house," the usual respectful address to a 
Basque proprietor of any rank. His wife is " Etcheco Anderea." 



Notes. 267 



Through Ibaneta's pass the noise resounds, 
Striking the rocks on right and left it comes ; 
'Tis the dull murmur of a host from far, 
From off the mountain heights our men reply, 
Sounding aloud the signal of their horns ; 
Etcheco Jauna whets his arrows then. 

They come ! They come ! See, what a wood of spears ! 
What flags of myriad tint float in the midst ! 
What lightning-flashes glance from off their arms ! 
How many be they ? Count them well, my child. 
I, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, II, 12, 
13. 14. 15. 16, 17, 18, 19, 20. 

Twenty, and thousands more ! 

'Twere but lost time to count. 

Our sinewy arms unite, tear up the rocks, 

Swift from the mountain-tops we hurl them down 

Right on their heads. 

And crush, and slay them all. 

What would they in our hills, these Northern men ? 
Why come they here our quiet to disturb ? 
God made the hills intending none should pass. 
Down fall the rolling rocks, the troops they crush ! 
Streams the red blood ! Quivers the mangled flesh ! 
Oh ! What a sea of blood ! What shattered bones ! 

Fly, to whom strength remaineth and a horse ! 
Fly, Carloman, red cloak and raven plumes ! 
Lies thy stout nephew, Roland, stark in death ; 
For him his brilliant courage naught avails. 
And, now, ye Basques, leaving awhile these rocks, 
Down on the flying foe your arrows shower ! 



268 Notes, 

They run ! They run ! Where now that wood of spears ? 

Where the gay flags that flaunted in their midst ? 

Rays from their blood-stained arms no longer flash ! 

How many are they ? Count them well, my child. 

20, 19, 18, 17, 16, IS, 14, 13, 

12, II, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, I. 

One ! There is left not one. 'Tis o'er ! 

Etcheco Jauna home with thy dog retire. 

Embrace thy wife and child, 

Thine arrows clean, and stow them with thine horn ; 

And then lie down and sleep thereon. 

At night yon mangled flesh shall eagles eat, 

And to eternity those bones shall bleach. 

The claim of this song to an ancient date, though ac- 
cepted by such high authorities as Cenac Moncaut and 
A. Chaho, seems to have been very successfully at- 
tacked. Mr. Webster quotes several eminent Basque 
scholars, such as M. Blade and M. Vinson, who have 
denied its authenticity on internal grounds, especially 
the modern character of the language. He then adds 
that, in the Gentleman's Magazine iox March, 1859, a let- 
ter appears from M. Antoine d'Abbadie, Membre de 
rinstitut, stating that this song had actually been among 
the unsuccessful pieces submitted for the poetical com- 
petition at Urrugne, of the previous August ; and that 
he had heard from one of his Basque neighbors the names 
of the two persons, the one of whom composed it in 
French, and the other translated it into modern Basque. 
*' This testimony," says Mr. Webster, '* has often been 
repeated by M. d'Abbadie, with the additional assurance 



Notes. 269 

that he knows not only the house, but the very room in 
which the song was first composed." 

CHAPTER VIII. 

(i) Page 91. '' Another difficulty" (in the study of 
Basque) " arises from the extreme variability of the 
language. There are, perhaps, not two villages where 

it is spoken absolutely in the same manner 

These different varieties are easily grouped into secondary 
dialects. Prince L. L. Bonaparte recognizes twenty-five 
of them, but they are reduced without difficulty to eight 
great dialects. A closer inspection farther reduces these 
eight divisions to three ; that is to say, the differences 
between the eight principal dialects are unequal, and 
admit of partial resemblances. The eight dialects 
are : the Labourdine, the Souletine, the Eastern Lower- 
Navarrese, the Western Lower- Navarrese, the Northern 
Upper-Navarrese, the Southern Upper-Navarrese, the 
Guipuzcoan, the Biscayan." The dialects do not corre- 
spond exactly to the territorial subdivisions whose names 
they bear. Thus the Western Lower-Navarrese is spoken 
in a part of the ancient Labourd, the Biscayan in Guipuz- 
coa. Only Guipuzcoa is entirely Basque, in a linguistic 
point of view. Navarre is only half so, Alava only a 
tenth part, Biscay three-fourths. Moreover, skirting the 
districts where the Basque is the native idiom of the ma- 
jority of the inhabitants at many points, there is an in- 
termediate zone in which Basque is known only by a 
minority of the population. This zone is most extensive 



2 yo Notes. 

in Navarre, but exists also in Alava and Biscay. In the 
valley of Roncal the men speak Spanish together ; with 
the women they speak Basque, as do the women to each 
other. A similar state of things exists at Ochagavia 
in Salazar." — M. JULIEN Vinson : "An Essay on the 
Basque Language," in Webster's Basque Legends. 

(2) Page 92. These statements are taken mainly from 
M. Garat's Origines des Basques de France et d^Es- 
pagne. A quite different account is given by Mr. Web- 
ster in his Essay on Basque Poetry, appended to the 
Basque Legends. He says that there is, perhaps, no 
people among whom versification is so common, and 
really high-class poetry so rare, as the Basques. The 
faculty of rhyming and of improvisation in verse is con- 
stantly to be met with. Not unusually a traveller in 
one of the country diligences, especially on a market- 
day, will be annoyed by the persistent crooning of one 
of the company ; and if he inquire what the man is 
about, will be told that he is reciting a narrative in 
verse of all the events of the past day, mingled, prob- 
ably, with more or less sarcastic reflections on the pres- 
ent company, and with special emphasis on the stranger. 
At the yearly village fetes, when the great ball-match 
has been lost or won, prizes are sometimes given for 
improvisation on themes suggested at the moment, and 
the rapidity of the leading improvisatori or Coblacaris 
is something marvellous. The whole of Basque po- 
etry, excepting the Pastorales, is lyrical. There is 
no epic, and scarcely any narrative ballads. Even in 



Notes. 271 

song the Basques show no remarkable poetical merit. 
The extreme facility with which the language lends it- 
self to rhyming has a most injurious effect upon versifi- 
cation, and the Basques are too often satisfied with 
mere rhyme. Yet, if thei" poetry has no great merits, 
it is still free from any ver> gross defects. It is always 
true and manly, and completely free from affectation. 
The moral tone is almost always good. The only peculi- 
arity, in a poetical sense, is the extreme fondness for 
allegory. In the love-songs the fair one is constantly 
addressed under some allegorical disguise. It is a star 
the lover admires, or it is the nightingale who bewails 
his sad lot. The loved one is a flower, or a heifer, a 
dove or a quail, a pomegranate or an apple. The rudest 
of the Basques never confuse these metaphors ; the al- 
legory is consistently maintained throughout. 

(3) Page 96. The Pastorale is a representative and 
survival of the mediaeval '' Mystery " or '' Miracle-Play," 
and in the remote districts is acted almost as seriously 
as is the Ober-Ammergau Passion-Play. It is an open- 
air performance, which unites, in interminable length 
and in the same piece, tragedy and comedy, music, 
dancing, and opera. The stage is generally constructed 
against a house in the Place of the village, and is com- 
posed of boards resting on inverted barrels ; one or 
more sheets, suspended from cross-bars, hide the house- 
walls and form the background ; to this drapery bunches 
of flowers and flags are affixed, and thus is formed the 
whole " scenery ; " the rest is open air and sky. Usu- 



272 Notes. 

ally, behind the sheet, though sometimes in front on a 
chair, sits the prompter or stage-director ; at the cor- 
ners and sides of the stage are the stage-keepers, armed 
with muskets, which are fired off at certain effective 
moments, and always at the end of a fight. The sexes 
are never mingled, the Pastorale being played either 
entirely by men or entirely by women, except, some- 
times, in the case of the " Satans," a part which is too 
fatiguing for girls. The speech is always a kind of 
recitative or chant, varying in time according to the 
step of the actors, and always accompanied by music. 
In all these Pastorales, sanctity and nobility of character 
are associated with calmness of demeanor and tone, and 
villainy and deviltry of all kinds with restlessness and 
excitement. The angels and saints, the archbishops 
and bishops, move with folded hands and softly gliding 
steps ; the heroes walk majestically slow ; the common 
soldiers are somewhat more animated in their gestures ; 
the Saracens, the enemies, the villains, rush wildly 
about ; but the chorus or " Satans " are ever in restless, 
aimless, agitated movement, except when engaged in 
actual dancing. This chorus, on which devolves the 
great fatigue and burden of the acting, is dressed in red 
beret, red, open jacket, white trousers with red stripes, 
red sashes, and hempen sandals bound with red ribands. 
They carry a little wand, ornamented with red ribands 
and terminating in a three-forked hooked prong. Blue 
is the color of the virtuous, red of the vicious. When 
the stage is empty of other actors, the " Satans " occupy 
the front corners of it, and dance the wild Saut Basque, 



Notes, 273 

singing at the same time some reflections on, or antici- 
pations of the piece played, much like the chorus of a 
Greek tragedy ; but in addition to this, there is gener- 
ally a comic interlude, more or less impromptu, and 
very slightly, if at all, connected with the main piece, 
wherein the ''Satans" take the principal role together 
with the best comedians of the other actors. This is 
spoken partly in Gascon or in French, while only Basque 
is used in the Pastorale proper. The representations 
last from six to eight hours. 

Among the characters in the Pastorale of "Abra- 
ham " are, The Eternal Father, who speaks chiefly in 
Latin quotations from the Vulgate, and always from be- 
hind the scenes ; three angels, Michael, Raphael, and 
Gabriel, who mingle quotations from the Vulgate with 
their Basque ; four Kings of the Turks ; Pharaoh, King 
of Egypt ; two good giants, Chavoq and Chorre ; with 
Sarah, Abraham, Isaac, Ishmael, Lot, with his wife and 
daughters, Melchizedek, and some inhabitants of Sodom. 
Satan and Bulgifer, the two '' Satans," are the authors 
of all Abraham's misfortunes. They stir up war against 
Abraham and Lot in the persons of the Turkish kings, 
who conquer Lot and slay his partisans, including the 
two good giants, whose corpses are carried off by Sa- 
tan to be feasted on, with the exclamation : '^ O what 
cutlets ! What a fine leg ! " Lot's wife, when the 
time comes for her to be changed into a pillar of salt, 
drops under the stage. When Isaac is born, he is 
forthwith baptized. — Condensed from Webster's Basque 
Legends. 



2/4 Notes. 

(4) Page loi. The Spanish Basques occupy the three 
provinces of Alava, Vizcaya, and Guipuzcoa. Vizcaya, 
the largest, contains about one hundred and six square 
leagues ; Guipuzcoa, which is the most densely popu- 
lated, fifty-two ; Alava, containing about one hundred 
and eighty square leagues, lies between Guipuzcoa and 
Navarre. These three provinces are known as Las Pro- 
vincias Vascongadas. Their national symbol is three 
hands joined, with the motto Irurac Bat, or three in 
one. The French Basque country occupies a part of the 
arrondissement of Bayonne, a very small portion of that 
of Oloron, and almost the whole of the arrondissement 
of Mauleon Licharre. It forms three subdivisions : Le 
Labourdin, or Pays de Labourd, La Soule, and La 
Basse-Navarre. It is bounded on the north by the 
Adour, on the west by the ocean, on the south by the 
Pyrenees. Its eastern limit is a curved line touching 
the cantons of Sauveterre, Navarreux, Sainte-Marie- 
d' Oloron, and Aramitz. Prince Bonaparte reckons the 
actual number of the Basques, not including emigrants 
established in Mexico, Montevideo, and Buenos Ayres, 
at 800,000, of whom 660,000 are in Spain, and 140,000 
in France. 

CHAPTER XIII. 

(i) Page 171. The Jesuits were expelled from Spain 
by the decree of October 12, 1868 ; but obtained a quasi 
permission to occupy their monastery at Azpeitia, and 
took possession again in 1877. The fine library of the 
monastery was removed to San Sebastian in 1869, but 



Notes. 275 

was restored at the end of the civil war. Since 1855 
the monastery has belonged to Guipuzcoa as provincial 
property. 

CHAPTER XIV. 

(i) Page 183. The traveller who may desire to explore 
this route in detail, will find it useful as well as agree- 
able to study M. Paul Perret's recent work, Le Pays 
Basque et Basse-Navarre. 



ACKNOWLEDGMENTS. 



In the preparation of this little volume, my acknowledgments 
are due to the following works for matter supplementing and 
illustrating my own observations : 

Cenac MoNCAUT. — "Histoire des Pyrenees et des Rapports 
Internationaux de la France avec I'Efpagne." 

D. J. Gar AT. — " Origines des Basques de France et d'Es- 
pagne." 

M, L. Capistou. — "Guide du Voyageur dans la Province 
Basque- Espagnole du Guipuzcoa." 

Paul Perret. — " Le Pays Basque et Basse-Navarre." Pt. 
IL 

Adolphe Joanne. — '* Les Pyrenees." This valuable manual, 
without which no one should attempt a tour in the Pyre- 
nees, is far more than a guide-book. It is an excellent 
summary. of historical, topographical, and ethnographical 
information, carefully worked up from the best sources. 



276 Acknowledgments. 

Adolphe Joanne. — "De Bordeaux a Bayonne," 
Richard Ford. — *' Handbook for Spain." 
Henry O'Shea, — "Guide to Spain and Portugal." 
Henry Blackburn. — " The Pyrenees." 
H. A. Taine. — "A Tour through the Pyrenees," 
W. F. P. Napier. — ** History of the War in the Peninsula 
and in the South of France, from 1807 to 1814." 

"Le Corps Saints de Plnsigne Basilique Saint- 

Saturnin de Toulouse." 
ViOLLET le Due. — ** La Cite de Carcassonne." 
Henry M. Baird. — " The Rise of the Huguenots of France." 
Merle d'Aubigne. — "History of the Reformation in the 

Time of Calvin." 
Rev. Wentworth Webster, M.A. — ** Basque Legends," 
with an essay on the Basque Language, by M. Julien 
Vinson. 
Murray's ** Handbook of France." 

Rev. C. Merivale. — " History of the Romans under the Em- 
pire. " 
Theophile Gautier— *' Voyage en Espagne." 

M. R. V. 
New York, February 12, 1883. 






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